From the Journals of Captain Sextus Silanus: A Tale of the High Seas
by yungpapi
Summary: In 2E 806, a Nibenese captain sets out from Leyawiin on a ship crewed entirely by Khajiiti sailors armed with a scroll of Icarian Flight and a clandestine mission. Little does he know, however, that he, and his ship, have been caught up in a mystery that they cannot begin to fathom. Their adventure will take them across the sea, and into the very bowels of Oblivion itself.
1. Author's Notes

**Author's Notes**

This story is generally intended for those who are already well versed in The Elder Scrolls lore. While for the most part I will not delve too deep into the more esoteric parts of TES lore, many of the references and terms brought up in the story are either not elaborated upon in any great detail, or are left unexplained entirely. This has been done in order to lend an air of authenticity to the text, as it is framed as a first-person, primary source written in a Tamrielic context. If you are ever confused about anything that is mentioned in the story, The Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages, The Imperial Library, and The Elder Scrolls Lore subreddit are all great sources of information.

I will do my very best to stay faithful to the lore. However, in some cases I will likely be bending it, not too dramatically, but certainly a little bit. Thus I would say that this story is not 100% lore accurate, but rather lore _authentic_ _ **—**_ meaning that I will portray what would be considered by an inhabitant of Tamriel an authentic vision of their world and way of life, if some things are not exactly as they might be. I should note that I will cohere to the entire sweep of the lore, including pieces of lore that are not found within the games themselves. Cyrodiil is still a jungle, the _ja-Kha'jay_ is on full display (meaning that there will be many breeds of Khajiit represented in this story, as opposed to the one that usually appears in Bethesda's TES games), races which have never been shown in the games such as the Imga come out, and etc. I think that, considering how much Bethesda has radically changed their own lore to fit the games, a little bit of bending on my part to tell a better story is not such a terrible thing.

This story is rated T, but I would say that it errs on the side of M. There is crude language in abundance (the protagonist is a sailor, after all), and there will be some strong violence later on.

I am by no means a sailor or an expert on sailing and navigation. If you notice any inconsistencies or problems in regard to nautical terminology, nautical distances, sailing, whatever, please don't hesitate to let me know.

Finally, as I have noted, the story is narrated in the first-person from a Tamrielic context. If you are familiar with The Elder Scrolls, you should know that, just like our own world, Tamriel is a place that is marked by a great deal of inter-racial tension. The protagonist is, to an extent, a racist, and so is his crew. This story draws upon that tension, and, through trial and tribulation, tries to resolve it. Note that ultimately this story is a denunciation of racism, and expresses the hope that through mutual understanding and respect it can be overcome. Therefore, any racist (or misogynistic) opinions expressed by the protagonist are **not** a reflection of my own beliefs, and while I do wish to make some real world parallels, the relationships and sentiments that are found in the story should not be read purely as allegory.

All characters and story events are my own OC.

With that said, I hope you enjoy!

 **DRAMATIS PERSONAE**

 _For when you can't remember those pesky Khajiiti names_

* * *

 **CREW OF THE _BREATH-OF-KYNE_**

 _SEXTUS SEVERUS SILANUS_

The author and protagonist of this tale. A Nibenese seaman, drunkard, scoundrel, and amateur bard, he has been entrusted with the captaincy of the _Breath-of-Kyne_ and its all Khajiiti crew by his likewise feline employer, Ab'soud.

 _YA'ZIN-DAR_

Nicknamed "The Clever Cutter", Ya'zin-dar is the first mate of the _Breath-of-Kyne_. Rumored to be a skooma fiend or simply mad, Ya'zin seems shifty and sneaky, but is in fact quite competent, commanding the respect and loyalty of the crew. Suthay.

 _ZA'NIR_

The _Breath-of-Kyne_ 's pilot, Za'nir is an aloof Khajiit with a gleaming white coat and a somewhat haughty bearing. Suthay-raht.

 _RA'JHERA_

Nicknamed "The Swift", Ra'jhera is The _Breath-of-Kyne_ 's bosun. Suthay-raht.

 _J'RASHA_

The _Breath-of-Kyne_ 's Stewardess, J'Rasha is sullen, lackadaisical, and disobedient. Cathay.

 _DRAZIR_

The _Breath-of-Kyne_ 's cook, Drazir is demure and soft of voice. Her food, according to the crew, is quite good. Suthay.

 _QAZIR_

The _Breath-of-Kyne_ 's purser. Suthay-raht.

 _JAGA_

A deckhand on the _Breath-of-Kyne_. Has the look of an experienced sailor. Cathay-raht.

 _DRO'BARRI_

Another deckhand. Older and quiet. Cathay-raht.

 _SHOLANI_

The _Breath-of-Kyne_ 's carpenter. Stout and muscular, he is known for his kind nature. Tojay-raht.

 **SECONDARY CHARACTERS**

 _AB'SOUD_

The owner of the _Breath-of-Kyne_ and Sextus' employer. An older Suthay-raht, Ab'soud walks with a limp. Cunning, roguish, and daring, he and Sextus were fast friends.

 _ALBINIA_

Sextus' former lover, born in Cyrodiil to a Breton mother and Nibenese father.

 _MA'ZAKA_

An associate of Ab'soud's who resides in Senchal. An enigmatic sort, he is rumored to be a "spider". Alfiq.

 _KILBEN VASS_

A Colovian warlord who presently rules Anvil and has taken radical measures to halt the influx of narcotics into the city.

 _KARJAZZ_

A friendly Khajiit who owns an inn catering to travelers of all races in Leyawiin. Speaks in the first person due to having been raised in the Heartlands. Suthay-raht.


	2. A Voyage Sets Forth

**From the Journals of Captain Sextus Silanus:** **An Adventure of Myth and Magick on the High Seas**

 _"_ _ **Ferdinand**_ _: Where should this music be, 'i the air or the earth? It sounds no more: and sure, it waits upon s_ _ome god o' the island."_

 _-William Shakespeare, The Tempest_

 **I:** **In Which a Voyage Sets Forth, & Halts at a Most Infamous Port-of-Call**

* * *

 _ **Captain's Log—Middas, 3**_ _ **rd**_ _ **Last Seed, 2E 806**_

We struck out from Leyawiin this morning with fortuitous winds, bearing south-southwest towards Senchal—I suspect we'll make port there, on the morrow. Ab'soud was adamant that the sugar can be got there for the cheapest rates, if one is willing to countenance the fecund surroundings. The whores too from what I'm told, so the men—or rather, the _cats_ —should well appreciate a brief idyll before we settle into the long haul. Or so I hope.

I know they chafe, and I can sympathize with that sentiment. To toil beneath a Niben captain, an _Imperial_ (as ironic as that appellative might sound these days), must recall…unsavory associations. Imagine, poor, lowly Sextus Silanus, mandating, voice deep with feigned authority, that a cat-man (more jaguar than a cat), spotted musculature rippling, eyes drawn and cold, _swab the poop deck_! Pah! What a farce!

They could claw my throat out without a moment's delay.

I've lived amongst them, the Khajiit, for a spell. I'd even be so bold to claim that I've earned the esteem and friendship of more than a few of the more cordial specimens of their race.

But I don't understand them. Not a bit, I'm afraid. Further, I'm dubious that I ever will. And how I came to captain a vessel in such a manner, crewed solely by Khajiiti seamen…well, I cannot be certain whether or not it be some caprice of fate or some cruel plot by that wretched cankerwort Ab'soud. Perhaps he's cackling even now.

Weather has been fair. Scarcely a cloud on the horizon, warm, vaporous. Positively paradisiac. We made good progress while the light and the wind still held; but the blusters abated shortly after sunset, and we now coast along lazily at a port tack, with a balmy westward breeze, the vast Quin'rawl Peninsula distant in the dark to starboard. I estimate that we'll make Senchal by mid-morning, perhaps sooner if the wind picks up once more.

I've dined in my quarters. No stomach for sugar tonight, and the crew dined on sweet meats and some manner of mash, no doubt likewise saccharine.

I myself supped on some cold chicken, well adulterated with chili oil (a most succulent affair), and a smattering of cheese and dried fruits. Drowned it all with brandy, of course. Perhaps a touch too much.

I'll test the waters with them on the morrow. Not that I dislike Khajiiti food. I've had my share of honey stew and moon-yam pudding...

Tomorrow. They'll be up to the whiskers in whores and drink—well lubricated. We can share a round, as it were. By Azura, we're all sailors—and I'll be damned if we don't have more in common, fur and tail notwithstanding, than we don't. Tomorrow.

I'll have to keep an eye on that Ya'zin-dar, though. Known as the "Clever-Cutter". Ab'soud assures me of his fidelity but…An odd sort of fellow—wiry, skittish, dangerously fleet, a Suthay if there ever was one. Possible skooma fiend.

He also happens to be my first mate.

 _And with that, I say goodnight_.

 _ **Captain's Log—Turdas, 4**_ _ **th**_ _ **Last Seed, 2E 806**_

A riotous day.

We came into port at Senchal, precisely according to my predictions, at mid-morning.

Dawn broke scarlet and glowing like embers on the horizon—never a good augury. But the crew seemed unperturbed, groggily going about their tasks. We found, however, after clearing the silt from our eyes, that we had drifted out into open seas, whereas we had fallen into our beds with land in sight. Our pilot, Za'nir (an aloof fellow, with a coat of gleaming white flecked with grey, but a good enough sort), took a sight and related that it was nothing to worry ourselves over—we had drifted off course by a slim margin, and were separated from our object by the span of a mere twenty leagues. With another strong wind at our backs, we would be delayed by an hour or less. Thus, I quickly shrugged off the dawn's portent altogether.

"This one thinks, Captain," Za'nir offered coolly, squinting through the cross-staff, "that those Khajiit who kept the watch last night should not drink mannish firewater with their supper."

I told him that I'd speak to Ya'zin-dar about it, and he nodded before trailing off in a mutter of Ta'agra.

I found Ya'zin-dar taking his breakfast while carefully eyeing a spritely Suthay-raht (or so I suppose—even now, the Khajiit and the elaborate moon-bound hierarchy that dictates their nature and birth confounds me) scaling the rigging. For a long moment, he did not turn to regard me, though I knew he was aware of my presence—our smell, like so many other things, disagrees with them.

Then, without warning, "Ra'jhera the Khajiit call 'The Swift'. This one agrees, though Ya'zin-dar hopes it is not so when he is with his bed-mates." He snickered through gold teeth while I followed his gaze to the foremast, where Ra'jhera (who I then remembered to be the bosun—those damnable names, all sound the same), whistled orders down to the hands and prepared to unfurl the foresail.

It was a puerile witticism, really; I had thought the Khajiit were renowned for their oral tradition. But, I returned with a remark of my own in good humor, hoping to curry some favor with my first mate.

"He'll need all the stamina he can get when we lay anchor in Senchal, I daresay."

" _Fusozay var var_ ," Ya'zin-dar replied knowingly, fingering his curled tail.

I must confess that my grasp of the Ta'agra is, lamentably, slippery at best. I was unfamiliar with the expression.

"It is a traditional saying of the Khajiit," he said, eying me as if I were a child, "It means, this one thinks...' _Enjoy life_ '." He grinned again.

Or, _lives_ , in their case. But I gave a curt nod in agreement.

A weighty silence grew between us then, and so I clove right to the heart of the matter, expressing mine and Za'nir's concerns over the behavior of the night watch.

Ya'zin-dar shook his head. "The Captain wounds this one. Za'nir was awake nearly all night with this one and the watch, recounting Khajiiti stories. It was not 'till Jode's face was hiding that little Za'nir curled into his hammock, and the watch was changed. The watch-cats did not realize because there were many clouds, and because they are no salty sailors, not because they drank the man-water. This one saw, but did not tell Za'nir because he was sleeping. And this one did not tell the Captain because he was sleeping too. Man is mad when he is awoken, no?"

Ridiculous. "Certainly I do not _enjoy_ being awoken in the night, but if the ship is driven off course and the pilot is abed, you can be sure that I expect a report. Is that clear?"

"Very well, Captain," the cat replied, inspecting his nails.

"Good," I continued, "And you? You did not take to your quarters last night?"

At that, he flashed a vulpine smile and purred, "Oh no, Ya'zin-dar lay awake waiting for the Captain _allllll night_."

I was growing more and more irritated with his attitude, but I decided to put a lid on it. Best to cultivate a friendly relationship; after all, it was a jest made in good humor. However, I made a mental note to make our positions on the ship clear if such behavior persists in future. For the nonce, I merely snorted, then further probed him about the watch's alleged indulgence in firewater.

" _Fusozay var var_ ," he said, shrugging, his eyes vacant of comprehension.

But I wouldn't let it go, and pressed him. The Khajiit scoffed at Za'nir's protests, claiming that the watch had simply mixed sugar with too much bad wine, and, as a result, had cried out, falsely, that dreugh were assailing the ship. They were sent below decks posthaste, and the watch changed.

I cautioned that in future, should there be any change of course, he was to inform Za'nir or myself, regardless of whether we're awake or no. Further, that the watch will no longer _indulge_ , whatever the vice, whilst on duty.

Ya'zin-dar nodded, chuckled warmly, and, with an air of conspiracy, whispered, "The Captain preaches temperance, yet he takes the ship to Senchal. This one wonders…why?"

"To get it all out of your system," I returned, turning to walk down deck, handily dodging a hulking cat, without doubt a Cathay-raht, carting a water barrel back to the hold, "There won't be whores and wine for many moons after!" He nodded after me, before barking an order in Ta'agra at some skulking deckhand.

It was a trifle, in truth, the whole affair. Scarce harm had been done, and our course had been corrected within a moment's breath. But it made me feel such a fool...Just like the dismal dawntide augury, it was by no means an auspicious beginning. Marinating in the bitter juices of embarrassment I took my breakfast and did some reading in my quarters.

Within the span of another hour or so, we had made Senchal. By then, the day was clear and humid. As we approached the eastern harbor (the city is home to three) and the vast collection of sun-caked stilt houses (bright as wildflowers and as multicolored) came into view, I began to recognize that it would be a hot day indeed.

The first smell that hits one is that of rotted fish—succeeded by shit, frying oil, and flaming rubbish. Even this early in the morning, the city was alive with a maddening cacophony of activity. Sailors from every nook and corner of Tamriel crowded the wharves, barking to one another in an impenetrable garble of Tamrielic tongues, creoles, and pidgins, unloading their cargoes, all stripped to the waist and gleaming with sweat. Still others jostled to enter the wineskins, trying to get an early start to their debauchery—raising my flask, I took a swig of brandy in a show of fellowship.

As we laid anchor, I spotted the first corpse, bobbing weightily in the lapping waters off the bow, heavily discolored and bloated—a Dark Elf, perhaps? The hilt of a dagger could be faintly discerned protruding from behind what had been the shoulder blades. While I filled out the docking papers, a pole boat piloted by a pair of fishercats in bright green smocks hooked the body with a spear and dragged it ashore.

I granted the crew the day for shore leave, but cautioned that the ship would be departing after nightfall. Before they scattered, I instructed Ya'zin-dar to accompany the quartermaster, the cook, and a handful of strong-arms to the bazaar in order to oversee the provisioning; the pilot, Za'nir, I ordered to come with me.

As the others lost themselves in the labyrinths of Senchal's furtive marketplace, the pilot regarded me with raised eyebrows and an air of confusion.

"The Captain has need of Za'nir?" he asked.

In truth, I didn't very well know why I had elected the pilot. But he struck me as trustworthy, and it would do well to have an interpreter and an additional blade in the case of an altercation. I told him as much.

"This one is no great fighter," he replied frankly, "Za'nir is a _sailor_ , not a warrior."

"Even so," I riposted, flashing him my most winning smile, "Every seaman knows how to handle themselves in a scuffle."

The pilot turned away my enthusiasm with a blank look, his derision apparent.

"Za'nir is a _cat_ , not a man."

I gestured to a press of jostling folk congregating before a canopied lane lined with vendors, and we dove in.

Bedlam—absolute bedlam. Hawkers perched atop perfumed divans, bartering kwama eggs and skooma pipes and colored sands; mendicants, naked save for their greasy headscarves (to display the fur of the body is considered a grievous ill), shivering in their sugar stupors, pissing themselves or miming lewd gestures at passersby; great vats of bubbling _j'aga_ oil, gleaming with frying jewels of sugar pasties; bristling posts of moon sugar caramels, colored like peacock feathers; liveried Imga pirate-barons, sheltering beneath silken parasols, paraded about on lacquered palanquins, contesting their bejeweled quatrains; hedge mages dazzling kittens with colored smokes and plumes of fire; whores of all denomination, hawking their goods or dancing about veiled in green silks; great clowders of dirty kittens darting and playing through the mess of it all.

All was framed by the black, spindly husks of the city's old quarters, burned and left fallow after the great Flu struck nearly three hundred years ago.

It was beautiful, and ugly too. I'd visited the city before, but I hadn't the courage to venture much further beyond the sailors' wineskins and bordellos that lined the quayside, where, amongst a staggering variety of tongues, Nibenese was spoken.

It is a city of scoundrels, of rogues and thieves and corsairs and whores. It is shit and spices. Unique in all the world.

And I love it.

Za'nir, of course, was not so keen; I had felt a sneaking suspicion that he was not one for the pleasures of the flesh when I had first laid eyes on him back in Leyawiin. I had thought, in all my stunted judgment of Khajiiti character, him to haughty, an inwardly drawn foil to the more boisterous and bawdy leanings of the crew—but then again, as we say in Niben Bay, "The better the pilot, the tighter the arse." Perhaps he secretly wanted to be a poet.

I saw my supposition realized in every scowl that played upon Za'nir's grey-speckled visage.

In his manner, he did not voice complaint until he had grown weary of our wanderings.

"Upon what errand do you lead Za'nir?" he asked, voice betraying no tinge of emotion as I popped a caramel into my mouth.

So I drew up a stool at a small sugar vendor and ordered a pot of tea and a plate of cakes for us. I thought it wise to disclose all before we embarked upon our true purpose in Senchal. After all, we ventured to the heart of the infamous Black Keirgo.

Once again, the pilot maintained his sangfroid air, warming his paws with his steaming cup (I could scarce countenance the brew, hot and thick as the air was).

"Za'nir does not think it wise, Captain," he began, regarding me with cool eyes, "It is a dangerous place, even for Khajiit. For men, this one does not want to imagine…"

I told him what Ab'soud had told me—that he had a friend (if they still lived) by the name of Ma'zaka (Ma'iq? Ma'zik? By the Eight, their names _do_ tax the tongue) who would give us a good price on sugar. And not just any old sugar: heirloom, pure, fresh. Carted directly from the plantation and refined on-site. Ab'soud swore to me that if I acquired ten jars of the stuff, along with our other cargoes, I'd come back to Leyawiin with a haul to rival a treasure fleet. The Anvil markets were starved of that kind of product (Colovians are, after all, a race of straight-laced arse lickers); they'd go stark raving mad for the stuff. " _Ab'soud will be the prince_ ," he had joked, manufacturing a false crown with a knobby crust of bread, " _And Sextus will be…a Count. Yes, a Count_."

I thought a higher title would suit me better, but no matter.

Thus, our aspiration was to waltz right into the Black Keirgo, find this "Ma'zaka" (Ma'isha? Ma'jadr?), acquire ten jars of fine moon sugar, and somehow port them back to the ship before nightfall.

Za'nir eventually acquiesced. As we paid and the empty teak trays were carted away, I heard him faintly utter something in Ta'agra.

I assumed it went something along the lines of, " _At the first sign of trouble, I'm throwing you to the lions_."

And the pity's that that that was not an altogether unimaginable notion.

( _Here a few ill-formed letters and blotched ink mark my attempts to ward off sleep—failed, as per usual. Brandy should be categorized as a soporific rather than a stimulant_ )

 ** _This is my first ever fanfic. I began it around two years ago, but stopped writing it at a certain point. Recently, I rediscovered it and decided to continue. I hope that you enjoy, and if you have any questions or criticisms, please let me know!_**


	3. The Black Keirgo

**II** **: In Which a Storm Besets the Breath-of-Kyne; the Captain Delves into the Black Keirgo on Curious Business; the Storm Abates, For Now**

* * *

 _ **Captain's Log—Freddas, 5**_ _ **th**_ _ **Last Seed, 2E 806**_

I will, before further enumerating the events of yesterday's layover in Senchal, detail today's likewise remarkable happenings.

We kept a westward bearing through the night, but found the winds unfavorable—warm and furious, they came blustering south-southeast from Hammerfell. Ya'zin-dar woke me in the night, relating that Za'nir had us working to windward at twenty-four degrees.

The cat was restless, I saw, jittering intermittently as he boasted proudly that the watch-cats were as sober and sharp as moth priests. His eyes, a cheesy yellow, were red-rimmed, shimmering coolly in the half-light of my quarters, and any sudden groaning of the boards seemed to make him flinch reflexively. I wondered how much sleep he had been getting, and asked him as much.

At my inquiring, Ya'zin-dar giggled, something passing imperceptibly across his face.

"This one does not need much," he began, soberly, "Life has not so many hours to spend them snoozing."

What then, did he spend his nights working on?

He regarded me with passive eyes. "Maybe one day Ya'zin-dar will show the Captain," he said blandly; then, "This one will take the watch this night."

I told him to go take a cat nap.

The day broke cloudy, foreboding rain. The wind was against us again, and progress was slow. The cloud cover was such that Za'nir couldn't take a sight, but estimated that we were some thirty-five leagues off the western coast of Elsweyr. For so long as the wind kept up like this, we'd continue being blown further out. At around midday, the rains began, and the wind picked up with it, laying into us at fifty-three knots. I only prayed that we wouldn't be caught in a storm, but I think that was a foregone conclusion.

"Khenarthi is not with us!" Ra'jhera cried to me hoarsely from the mizzen, shielding his face from the driving rain. The bosun's gang was scrambling wildly to drop the sails. It'd be a poor choice to reef in this weather.

The rain quickly became positively diluvian, and on its coattails arrived the tempest itself, as unwanted as a wet fart: whooping lightnings, roiling seas, and (all according, it seems, to some fundamental law of the Earth Bones intended to vex sailors from the beginning of creation), leaky holds.

At the time of this writing, the storm yet persists, and a constant patter of droplets tap out their cadences upon the boards. Waves are mighty, as should be expected, but it seems as though we are preyed upon by a mere late summer squall. If luck holds—and we _have_ had luck, and wind, on our side, Ra'jhera be damned—it should dissipate in the night. Such storms are wont to wreak themselves upon the world briefly, then scatter and break as swiftly as they came. Little more than a tantrum, a _fierce_ tantrum, aye, but a tantrum. Kyne's little rages.

Or so I hope.

But as I have promised to do, I will henceforth relate Senchal's episode. What better way to weather a storm?

—

It was a simple thing, divining the way to the Black Keirgo. Its infamy is earned honestly, and its name (incorporated, in increasingly artful variations, into sailor's oaths and mercenary curses) one might use as a yardstick for one's iniquities.

Imagine yourself to be a corsair, a cutpurse, a sellsword, a highwayman, or whatever roguery you fancy. Perhaps, say, you ply skooma dens; perhaps you've purloined the pearls off a highborn ladies throat; perhaps you've pilfered the proverbial candy from a babe; perhaps, even, you've killed a man (or mer), or many. _Even then_ , you might scoff at the suggestion of finding oneself in the Black Keirgo's furtive labyrinths.

"Why yes, I must profess, I _am_ a rogue. But there's dens of thieves and there's dens of spiders, and, between you and me, I've always been an arachnophobe."

( _One must, of course, excuse the verbiage of this hypothetical rogue; the average prole one encounters would spit and guffaw before flashing a set of gold-studded teeth and mumbling some unutterable curse. Sextus Silanus, is, of course, a more eloquent scoundrel_.)

In retrospect, I realize the great folly of our errand. To walk into the greatest slum in all Tamriel, armed with little more than a fruit knife, a milquetoast Khajiiti pilot, and a name must have smacked of absurdity. But, as Yahzin-dar, who seems to be ever brimming with Khajiiti aphorisms, says—

" _Gzalzi vaberzarita maaszi_ **"**.

Absurdity has become necessity

Vanity, foolhardiness, brazen self-assurance—I know not what drove me. But some Divine (I like to imagine that it was Mara) was indubitably keeping watch over we two loons as I questioned some hawker (I think an herbalist of some sort), "Which way to the Black Keirgo" without the least bit of self-awareness. The turbaned vendor regarded us with a kind of startled bemusement, but, in the end, did point us in the right direction.

No monument or landmark demarcates the beginning of the quarter. One continues through the thronged bazaars that mark the rest of the city, though perhaps the environs assume a more squalid aspect (in comparison with Senchal proper, at the very least); the cobbled courts filthier; derelict corpses moldering in the alleyways; the shanty houses more desiccated; the nightsoil more a major key than one leitmotif of many; the shopkeeps more scrutinizing and suspicious, very often brandishing gleaming talwars.

Then, without premeditation, one has reached the Black Keirgo, and one knows it, without scruple. No threshold is passed, no line crossed. It merely _becomes_ , like some fungal canker sprouting from an already well-warted toe.

Za'nir, whose eyes went as wide as a cat's were reasonably capable, seemed to blanch, fur notwithstanding. And, I profess, I myself was of a like mind. It was only then that the gravity of our situation began to coalesce.

We ventured further, cautious, perhaps, of making a sound. Few roamed these alleys. We glimpsed (or, _thought_ we glimpsed), out of the corner of our eyes, shadowy figures darting between the low and dimly-lit ways. A thick canopy of banded cloth, intended to provide shade, hung over it all, lending the scene a preternatural gloom; how one can surmise the hour of the day I can scarce imagine. Wretches wracked with sugar stupors eyed us faintly through heavy-lidded eyes; grey-blue skooma smoke fingered its way through the twilight from curtained windows, lit softly with orange light. Oil lamps dangled treacherously from above, long extinguished—a fire could consume the place with an ill-timed gust of wind. Hushed words carried from the alleys and the mudbrick huts, far-off tracings of music, but otherwise a silence reigned as thick as cream.

"Is the Captain certain that this is the Black Keirgo?" Za'nir asked, nearly wordlessly.

In truth, I didn't. One imagines at the conjuring of the Keirgo's name something more… _outrageous_. Wicked. Disreputable. Nefarious. What have you. I even heard a kitten mewling off somewhere, and some muffled laughter.

We would soon happen upon the perversity we sought.

The canopied laneway then convulsed and twisted hard to the right. Upon turning the corner, we were nearly blinded by an eruption of furious light— _daylight_ , that is. The Keirgo opened onto a broad plaza, dominated by the crumbling façade of an old imperial administration building or entrepôt from Reman's time, hoary with creepers. Two suitably imperious palms flanked the aching doorway, their feathered boughs joining at the center of some frieze obscured by lianas—likely a depiction of Alessia, as was common in those days.

The court was empty, save for the odd mendicant shuffling their way hurriedly into some moaning portal. And, of course, the requisite beggars and corpses. One of them, no larger than a housecat, was sprawled wildly across the flagstones, the blood appearing to be freshly spilt. Carrion birds perched, heads twisting curiously at their quarry, upon the caved-in eaves.

Za'nir grimaced at the sight.

Situated at each of the cardinal points (save for the north, where two smaller portcullises flanked the building) were great archways, likewise hewn in the imperial style, stained with humidity and smoke from old cookfires. We had emerged from the eastern arch, as it appeared.

I asked the pilot which way we should go, and, regarding me with empty eyes, he shrugged nervously.

"Za'nir cannot pilot in waters such as these."

Thus, a ventured guess, I elected the southern route. I hoped to assuage the cat with some dictum—"'Tis always been my lucky point on the compass," or something along those lines—but none came to me. Perhaps, however, it was not such an unfortunate deduction, for it led us right into the maw of the Keirgo, for all the good it did us.

We came upon a warren of brothels. Not that the more…accommodating quarters of the city were _not_ rife with whores plying their trade. But these were of a different ilk. Once more, the musty haze of skooma vapors hung in the air, making visibility (and concentration) difficult. The smoke had induced both mine and Za'nir's eyes to tears. My mind was beginning to become muddled, as is the way with skooma, from the fumes alone.

This is not, of course, taking into account the rank odor of shit, sweat, piss, sex, and other lovely bouquets which words do not give me recourse to describe.

The mudbrick halls were crowded closely together, and draped in scarlet fabrics. Here, unlike in the bazaars, one encountered Khajiiti whores, who, not bound by the laws of decorum or culture, bared all for the grasping eyes of onlookers. They presented themselves with licentious gestures from the windows, calling out invitations in thick Ta'agra. They rushed at us, presenting bowls of sugared cream, and cursing at us when we would not take of it.

Whores of other races, of course, were in evidence—I even saw a Niben woman, clad in naught but serried garlands of flowers, hurl a lewd suggestion our way.

Some wore chains. Bound at the neck to some Pahmer-raht muscle, who regarded us with curious eyes, a nude Dark Elf woman gnawed eagerly at a hunk of bread. An unmistakably Nordic woman, brawny and veiled in turquoise silks, haunches already livid with marks, was further whipped by a stoic Redguard. Kittens and whelps alike rushed up to us, clawing at our feet before being chastised by their bare-breasted mothers.

We did not bandy words, Za'nir and I, as we navigated this pandemonium. I doubt, even if we had wished to share our thoughts, we could have heard one another above the din of wailing pipes, laughing patrons, and ecstatic moans.

None so much as cast us a second glance, though we must have appeared nonplussed (to say the least). I could surmise that Za'nir was not accustomed to such sights, though he had earned his stripes as a sailor just as any other. Neither was I very familiar with such ground—"Well, yes, I must profess, I _am_ a rogue…"

By degrees we spied a portly man, puffing coolly away at his pipe, who might have been a Breton or a Colovian by the look of him (ruddy cheeked, silver hair cut trimly, a pointed goatee). Not expecting much, I hailed him in the Imperial tongue, asking whether he knew of this "Ma'zaka" (I know now that my principal supposition was correct). An empty look reigned over his plush features, and listlessly he gestured towards a grimy alley bereft of light. I shared a dubious look with Za'nir, but it did not appear to be any more nor any less inhospitable than anything we had already seen in the Keirgo, and, leaving the man behind, we dove in.

It was a downwards sloping laneway, terminating in a single door bathed in vermillion luminescence from a dangling lantern. The doorman was a broad, tiger-striped Cathay-raht, thick-muscled biceps bound in silver rings. His gaze was fierce, and we fairly quailed beneath it. With a goading look, I motioned for Za'nir to speak. Cautiously, he stepped before me and queried the hulking cat in a soft voice, thick with the purrs and lilting hisses which define the Khajiiti tongue.

The two exchanged brief words, and at the mention of "Ma'zaka" the Khajiit barked a feral laugh ripe with ridicule. I could only assume that the fool of a Breton had given us wrong directions, and Za'nir only confirmed my deduction.

"He says that we have come to the wrong place; we must seek out the lane called Unwashed Paw. That it is where Ma'zaka dwells. He says Ma'zaka is known to him, but only for the rumor that he is a sugar fiend and the son of a nightsoil collector. It is whispered that he is a spider."

"Are you certain that we can trust him?" I asked, casting a bold glance at the doorman.

"Za'nir is not certain of anything in this place."

But it was all the tell we had to go on of this "Ma'zaka", and, knowing Ab'soud, it sounded like one of his minions.

So we went.

We were impelled to wade once more through the drudgery of the brothels, and in the process I was very nearly bitten by a viper nestled menacingly between a pair of Orcish breasts. Upon emerging into the blonde sunlight of the imperial court, I was certain that I myself was under the effects of skooma torpor. My stomach churned, and the world seemed to me to spin beneath my feet; mist clouded the edges of my vision, and, if I stood still for more than a few moments, I succumbed to a wicked sort of vertigo.

The doorman had instructed Za'nir that the Unwashed Paw lay to the west, but beyond that he was not certain. We delved into more alleyways lined with skooma dens. In one, a wild-eyed Khajiit threatened us with a knife, and we lost ourselves in blind lanes trying to outrun him. By turns, after that, we then found ourselves in another sprawling, open-air court, pitched with multicolored tents and thronged with filthy Khajiit, rubbish fires blazing in the corners.

By then, my shirt was drenched with sweat from the close heat of the Keirgo. The effect of the brilliant sun, the smoking fires, the skooma, and the wretched humidity nearly induced me to fainting. I steadied myself on a mudbrick wall, on the verge of retching, while Za'nir interrogated a Khajiiti female sitting cross-legged on a dusty carpet with her swaddled kitten.

The sun was still high and furious, but I now thought our errand to be little more than errant folly. The notion of carting the sugar back through this madness before we struck port I contemplated ruefully. I knew that I would bear the stench of this place for days to come, no matter how thoroughly I washed.

As I scrutinized a particularly monstrous ant skitter across the rammed earth of the ground, Za'nir lightly pawed my shoulders. I whirled about to meet his gaze, perhaps a bit too swiftly. The world spun, and, dazed, I was impelled to steady myself against the wall once more. Knitting my brows, I asked the pilot what the matter was.

"We have found the Unwashed Paw."

I found myself agreeing with the doorman's assessment of the place: a mire of exceeding wretchedness. As if taunting me, a renewed plume of piss and garlic wafted in the air, causing bile to rise in my throat.

"But," he continued slowly, "Ma'zaka does not live here anymore."

I prayed then that the Eight would smite that wretched wound of a place into the mud. But, I simply nodded, eyes downcast into the dust.

However, suddenly, the Khajiit with whom Za'nir had spoken darted up, babe still clinging to her breast, and came to us, nervously glancing around her. She exchanged some soft, conspiratorial words with the pilot before rushing back to resume her place. Za'nir flashed me a fanged grin, before setting off towards the opposite end of the court, where a red-canopied alley thrust deeper into the bowels of the Keirgo. Stomach still swimming, I stumbled after him.

"We are lucky," he said, as we came under the awnings of the red-hued alley, "Ma'zaka is close by."

I remember thinking: _Shit never has far to fall_. Or perhaps I merely imagined the thought. I don't suppose I could have thought of much more than the pounding in my temples, nor uttered anything beyond a moan.

I put my faith in my pilot. He is, after all, possessed of the gift of navigation. And, following a length of time that seemed nearly endless, we finally arrived at a studded wooden door set into a crumbling wall of mudbrick, painted a vibrant orange. I think it was the color that roused me above all else, even before Za'nir shook me to my awareness.

We seemed to be far away from the court of the Unwashed Paw, despite his assurances. Beyond that, our environs were mostly featureless, in line with what I have already described in the Keirgo. I thanked the Eight that we hadn't yet been knifed to death while Za'nir rapped at the door with the great brass ring set in its center.

After some time, a tabby pushed open the door, a sight which will to me never cease to be incredulous—it was an Alfiq. One of the few Khajiiti breeds that are quadrupedal, an Alfiq looks something like the common house cat.

The creature offered a few words in Ta'agra to the pilot, which he returned in his characteristic soft rasp. He shared a knowing look with me.

"He says that any litter-mate of Ab'soud's is his as well."

I realized that I was standing in the presence of Ma'zaka, and nearly suppressed a guffaw. But, knowing that to be indecorous, I accepted the compliment gracefully—or as gracefully as I was able, considering.

We emerged from the street into a sparsely decorated manse, dimly-lit with blue candles. Richly ornamented divans were situated at various intervals; Ma'zaka leapt upon one of them, (verdant silk shot with gold, if I recall correctly) and curled himself lazily into a ball, his shining green eyes still watching us. I supposed that this was our invitation to be seated. A female, perhaps a servant of some kind, wrapped in a bright yellow _budi_ , brought us a tooled silver kettle steaming with tea alongside a tray of moon sugar candies.

Za'nir regarded the surroundings with a petulant, even disgusted air.

After pouring myself and the pilot a cup, I decided, my spirits having fairly rejuvenated, to open negotiations. How strange it was, talking business with a bloody tabby cat!

I told him that we had little time in Senchal and were here upon urgent business at Ab'soud's behest. I said that Ab'soud desired ten jars of the finest sugar he had available, though was careful not to reveal my intentions in Anvil. I saw that Za'nir did not translate—I wonder where the cat had learned the Imperial tongue. I suppose the same place as Ab'soud and all the rest of them.

A translation from Ta'agra, however, was still in demand.

"Ma'zaka says that he and Ab'soud were old friends in Morrowind…and that he would give the Captain a… _just_ , this one thinks that is the word, price for what you desire." At this, something inexorable passed over Za'nir's face. I suspected what it might be, and I myself was not exempt from the surprise of it.

 _Ab'soud lived in Morrowind_?

Which, of course, was met with the subsequent thought— _Ab'soud was a slave_?

That is not to say that _no_ cat or lizard walks free in the land of ash, but it is certainly the first image that comes to mind when one considers the condition of beastfolk in Morrowind. It puzzles me still, and Ma'zaka offered no explanation, even if he did notice the looks etched on our faces.

Further, I was perplexed at what exactly the cat insinuated with that choice of wording—what did " _just_ " imply? We were purchasing uncommon sugar, to be sure, but in Elsweyr sugar is as plentiful as water. I hoped that, knowing me to be Niben, he would not try to gouge me.

I asked him for a quote.

"Ma'zaka says that…five thousand of your golden septim coins should suffice."

I regarded the cat coolly, endeavoring to get a read on him. It was not _outrageous_ , in truth; I knew that I could lower it, if I wished, though fatigued from the day's events, I was not of a mind to haggle.

"Ma'zaka adds that the Captain shall gain one hundred times that in the Anvil markets."

At this I started, staring at him with incredulous eyes. How had the cat known?

A mischievous look overtook Ma'zaka's feline features, or as far as I could tell. He hissed something to Za'nir before scrutinizing me once more, triumphantly.

Za'nir looked to me nervously, "Ma'zaka says that he is no kitten playing at yarn. He says he asks very little of the Captain."

Ab'soud chooses his friends well. In the end, the agreed price was paid, following another round of rather tedious deliberation which I am loath to record. The sugar, he said, was would be carted to our ship by two hulking Cathay-rahts, who I was dubious even in the Black Keirgo would be threatened, before the appointed hour. Strangely, a mute Redguard woman, whose name I never learned, was procured to guide us out of the Keirgo and back to the ship. Her face was disfigured, and she bore the brand of...slavery?

I found myself very much wanting to leave.

Before we departed, Ma'zaka was sure to package for me a bag of moon sugar caramels.

He said, through Za'nir, regarding me curiously—

"Be sure, Captain, to give Ma'zaka's regards to his litter-mate in Leyawiin."

I told him that it would be so, and we departed, emerging from the Keirgo accompanied by the Redguard just as the afternoon began to rouge, and without further incident.

I am still curious as to how we two came to no bodily harm—indeed, for a den of cutthroats, I'd say that we emerged from our ordeal remarkably unscathed, at least in a physical sense. Perhaps, by some caprice of fortune, we narrowly missed Rogue Alley or Murder Way—though I doubt that, even had we been noticed as objects of closer scrutiny by some odious force, we could have presented any possible threat. More likely, recognizing us for what we were, these hidden, mustachioed (or rather, whiskered) evildoers scoffed and bent their murderous intent upon other, less unwieldy quarries.

The ship departed at the appointed hour and with the appointed cargoes, including those newly acquired, safely stowed in the hold.

That night, for the first time, I dined with the Khajiiti crew. It was a silent affair. A classic honey stew with meat which I could not identify. Wine, brandy, and sugar aplenty. Despite my goading, they would not laugh, would not bandy with me, though a few had an amused look in their eyes. By the end of the evening, I was fairly drunk, and Ya'zin-dar, with a wry grin, escorted me back to my cabin.

I fear an iron fist will not bode well with these Khajiit. But neither shall an outstretched palm.

How, by Azura, am I to earn these damned cats' respect? I'm an able seaman, aren't I? By the Eight, I was born with one toe in the water! I've plied the seas from Stros M'kai to Solstheim! Haven't I?

 _But, you've never captained a ship full of cats, now have you Sextus?_

No. That much is certain.

 _You've never felt so out of your element, now have you Sextus?_

Not recently, though once in Auridon I was nearly strung up for making a jape about Lorkhan. Nasty folk, those High Elves.

 _You've never felt so powerless, so much a fool, now have you Sextus?_

I can think of prior occasions, though this undoubtedly is one of my most foolish mistakes.

Some part of me believes that my efforts will bear fruit. That at the very least they don't look at me as if they'd rather drive a knife into my gut—at least, that the less _subtle_ of their number don't. The craftier ones…well…who can say?

—

It seems as though my foray into the iniquitous Black Keirgo, thus, terminated in bathos. Perhaps, in some secret place, I had wished it to be marked by momentous occasions. I realize, of course, that such desires derive from vanity above all else. What is it, I wonder, that impels these yearnings to quicken? We are certainly unconscious of them, I am sure. How many times, for instance, have I stood at the edge of a precipice or the bow of a ship, wrestling with the mute urge to throw myself into the empty air?

Some lives, I think, are bent to those who live them. Topal the Pilot, for instance, was one such mer. Others, such as myself are bent by life into premeditated shapes. We are caught in the web of events rather than weaving them of our own accord; we do not seize events, but rather are _seized_ by them. Or perhaps, in the chronicling, the truly hapless, upon which history has feasted, were the most unwitting of them all. Imagine, poor old Topal stumbling upon Cyrodiil like a drunkard in the night (so like myself!)

But it matters not, I think, truly whether events fall upon one or one falls upon them. What comes after… _that_ , Sextus Severus Silanus, _that_ is the rub.

But what is all this? The ruminations of a fool. A drunken one at that, and that stings doubly. Another bottle you've drained. Empty, empty, empty… _pah_! _Naughty_ Sextus, _this one_ says you _must_ pace yourself.

Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!

 _ **Captain's Log—Loredas, 6**_ _ **th**_ _ **First Seed, 2E 806**_

It is midday, and the skies, while still silvered with heavy clouds, bode rain.

The storm continued throughout the night, wracking us with particularly ferocious breakers in the hours after midnight. However, before dawn, a curious calm conquered the raging seas, and, briefly, the face of Magnus shone.

Za'nir scrambled above decks to take a sight while the skies were clear, and the crew hastened to inspect the damage. The pilot did not bear happy tidings—we had been blown twenty-four leagues southwest, out to sea.

We met in my quarters with the Ya'zin-dar, Ra'jhera, and J'Rasha (the Stewardess, whom I have not mentioned due to her seeming lackadaisical attitude and insolence; a sullen, quick Cathay, I think I shall have to have her disciplined if things persist), to discuss the best course, scrutinizing the painted heirloom of a map which my uncle gave to me as a young seaman. After a chorus of argument, it was eventually decided that we should plot a course towards the outer Summerset Isles, taking advantage of the Goldhorn Current instead of braving the wild seas off of Valenwood's southeastern coasts.

Presently, we cleave to that course, despite contrary winds, under Za'nir's watchful eye. I wonder if our "expedition" into the Black Keirgo together curried any favor with him; he remains as unreadable and placid as Lake Rumare in the spring. In any case, I have retired to my quarters to take my luncheon and record a few thoughts. And to escape this wretched humidity.

Noticed a peculiarity with J'Rasha. She insisted upon our resuming our course towards Anvil on the track we had previously taken, hugging the coasts of Valenwood. We had assumed such a course in order to save time—taking the Goldhorn does not by any means reduce one's itinerary, and although it _is_ perhaps the safer route, rounding Valenwood's cape is swifter overall. Yet J'Rasha had argued with some earnestness to strike north instead of northwest.

While I myself, of all people, can sympathize with her desire for rapidity, I am forced to wonder…What is she in such a rush for? It was peculiar…even as I write this, I know that I cannot properly express my sentiments on the matter. The waiver of the voice, the glinting of the eye…it all strikes me as odd.

Day by day, I feel more a stranger on my own ship. As if I ever wasn't.

Ya'zin-dar, I find, likewise returns to my thoughts. What did he mean when he said that he would show me one day? What _does_ he spend his nights doing?

A captain's status is predicated upon his relation to his mates. My first mate I scarcely understand—a rumored skooma fiend (though the more I observe the cat, the more I find this claim dubious), a wildcard, a jitterer. Did Ab'soud jest, as he is wont to do, when he sought to soothe my concerns? Ha-ha, funny cat you are—and as for Ab'soud's relation to Morrowind…well, that is another nut in need of cracking, at another time.

My second mate, the pilot…well, he is not so unwieldy as the others. He carries out his damned duty at the very least, though he is as aloof as ever.

And my third, the stewardess…suspicious. There is an air about her. Perhaps she broke some particularly foul wind? I know not. But I do know I must regard her with both eyes open.

But these are half-formed thoughts, smattered onto the page between morsels of bread and sips of wine. By night, I shall let loose the rest, and perhaps then I shall have the whole.

To my own duties, then, I must return. After all, the Khajiit have little patience for books. They'll think their Captain even more the child for occupying his days with his nose tucked between one. Sniffing my own words.

 _Pah_! They must stink of arse!

 _ **Captain's Log—Sundas, 7th Last Seed, 2E 806**_

Little to report today. Thankfully, we seem to have emerged from the squalls and emerged in sparkling seas. High sunlight, blessed winds, cloudless skies, and full sails. The humidity persists despite the breeze, but that is the norm for such latitudes, after all. Za'nir relates that we are well on course to Summerset.

Took some Khajiiti fare Drazir, the cook, had prepared for luncheon. Though I am not unopposed to Khajiiti food, and, indeed, find a great deal of it pleasant, today's plate, consisting of some curious rice dotted with crystallized fruits, jellied fish, and drenched in a bronze-colored honey sauce, was not at all to my liking. Need to preserve my own stores, though, so I grimaced through it, washing the film the fish left on tongue with generous gulps of Colovian wine. Colovians—I must say, if there is anything those beasts have on us, it is their exquisite vintages, and, though perhaps less refined, their stout ales. The quality of their drink, at least, explains their perpetual drunkenness.

A pain took hold of my stomach following, however, and since then I've thrown back cup after cup of water, trying to piss out the sugar. I could not countenance the thought of remaining shuttered in my dark quarters while my stomach roiled; fresh air, I find always assuages such pangs. Consequently, I have perched myself upon a coil of rigging near the stern, occupying myself with writing (it seems that I write more than I captain) and observing the comings and goings of the crew. Exposing myself to _their_ scrutiny as well.

Thus far, I have garnered some curious glances, as well as some rather unpleasant ones (those often followed by a whispered jeer to a fellow), but few have deigned to speak to me. A nod, here or there, a deferential "Captain", but little else. For the most part, a look, whether belonging to the first or the second camp, is shared before they sullenly continue with their labors.

I suppose, too, that they are intrigued by the sight of my journal. They scoff at writing as if it were the scratchings of a kitten, even if they don't show it; I've heard as much from Ab'soud. And, after all, who can blame them? They suckle history from their mother's teats.

I've observed little worth writing, unfortunately. The bosun's gang seem to fall in line quickly behind Ra'jhera—he seems to brook no impudence, and they go about their duties more like monks than sailors, though when the bosun is out of view one can glimpse something of their mirth reemerge.

Ya'zin-dar, though I already was aware, is fond of japes. Though he appears to command the loyalties of his subordinates—a fact of which I am envious—he will often set a group of them to cackling before, a sober look returning to his face, he returns to the task. I can only hope that he is a sharper wit in Ta'agra than in Imperial. He did come to me, once, to ask after my purpose in roosting on the deck. I told him honestly that I wanted to feel the sea breeze and keep watch over the crew.

At that, he barked out a laugh and whispered, "The Captain does not need to worry. This one is always watching."

Another giddy laugh, and a strange look which I cannot well describe, my knowledge of Khajiiti physiognomy inadequate as it is. Then, he capered off on some errand.

The slippery devil. There are times, I feel, when he will utter something of great pith and moment, hinting at something unseen; just as easily, however, he will cackle like a monkey, and the façade of prophecy and portent dissolves in an instant.

It seems that, perhaps, my estimation of Za'nir is one shared by the rest of the crew. Rarely do I see him fraternize with his fellows, rather preferring to keep to himself, many times staring out across the sea at something unseen.

I wonder what it could be?

I recall Ya'zin-dar telling me that the pilot regaled the watch with Khajiiti stories; the first mate himself likewise seems to hold Za'nir in esteem, though, of course, I cannot be certain. A peculiar contrast. Perhaps they are as perplexed as I am. I wonder what it is about him? With his white coat, he certainly has an interesting look about him. And I cannot say that he is discourteous, especially when one considers the others. Rather he is…I do not know. As I've noted, aloof is the aptest word to describe it. Perhaps he passes his time inventing new tales, though somehow I doubt it.

J'Rasha, the stewardess, continues with her…erraticism. It is not that I believe, as is the common assumption amongst mannish races, that the Khajiit are laggards, lazy cats who would sooner nap away their days than raise a finger. It's obvious that it isn't so—Ra'jhera's gang operates more like a well-disciplined century of the Imperial Legion than anything, and would find themselves more than welcome on the decks of any ship in Tamriel. And Ya'zin-dar, despite his eccentricities, knows full well how to set the crew in motion.

It is not J'Rasha's laziness that strikes me as uncouth. I've witnessed many a moon-eyed greenhorn become an able seaman—though they did not happen to be stewards of a sailing ship either. Rather, it is the _manner_ of her laziness. She has a kind of hauteur about her, a bravura…she _taunts_ , all while acting out the well-worn patterns of stewardship. As I have admitted, I am not yet any great judge of Khajiiti character, but… _no_ , I do not believe I am mistaken. Her underlings, though perhaps less bold, nevertheless share a kernel of her character, a kind of hostility, not merely towards me, but towards their fellows as well. And though I have not yet observed her sharing glances with Ya'zin-dar or the others (the previous evening in which we deliberated upon our change of course, their faces were as ever unreadable to me, their mannerisms revealing nothing), but…I _must_ speak to him upon the subject. Perhaps he will betray what he knows.

As ever, I fear that I am too hasty to cast judgement. Scarcely a week has elapsed, and it seems that I have the whole crew profiled. Of course, I don't believe that it has not been sufficient to grasp a full understanding, but…I feel that if there is any truism which I can with full certainty vouch, it is this—

" _The sea scours men's hearts clean_."

An aphorism from some poet of the First Empire, whose name escapes me (Polybius? Tetius? Lucencius?), which I unearthed from some dust-caked tome of my father's library.

Whether cats are the same, well, experience implies that it is so. I _did_ sail, once, with a cantankerous old Khajiit named Babsur. He was worth his salt, if I recall (I was only a young man at the time). But nevertheless, cantankerous.

But my hand grows tired, ink scarce, and I am loath to go below decks to fetch another pot.

The stomach pangs are mostly at end, the sky is wide, cast with crimson, and the winds remain fair.


	4. A Plot Unfurls

**III** _ **:**_ **In Which a Plot Rears its Dark Head**

* * *

 **Captain's Log—Tirdas, 9** **th** **Last Seed, 2E 806**

 _Madness_!

I feel as though I am too enfeebled to put pen to ink, but at the very least it is not as bad as yesterday. Perhaps Stendarr has granted me a little of his mercy...No, I know it—I was very near death. And I might be still. In mortal danger, doubtlessly.

On Sundas, following my apparent "recovery" from my stomach pangs, I went to bed with the full intention of rising early the next morning. I have been prone to oversleep of late—and doubtless I know the perpetrator. I've always liked to awaken and pass some time in the early hours of the day with a book, before duty draws me away.

To my chagrin, however, I awoke yesterday an hour after noon, my stomach roiling, my limbs nearly plastered to the sheets with perspiration, and my head searing witha nasty fever. For a time, I was capable of little more than croaking to clear the phlegm from my craw. Any attempt to rise was met with a spasm, and hammerlike blows assailing the inside of my skull. I can scarcely recall an occasion when I have ever been so ill, and still, even writing this, feel the urge to vomit. The vertigo is horrible.

It was Drazir, curiously, who came to me first. She knocked hesitantly on my door, and, at my murmur, entered quietly. She wished to know whether I was hungry, and had brought me a tray of clear soup, a hunk of hard bread, some strips of salted meat, and a few cold plums.

But I had no appetite, not even for the mildest of victuals—rather, I hankered for water, and motioned to the skin at my desk, which she brought to me meekly, averting her eyes. Then, to the extent that I was capable, I asked for her to bring the first mate. I couldn't make out any expression on her face. Then she left, the tray still steaming at my bedside.

Ya'zin-dar stormed in shortly afterwards. I was rather taken aback, and, with great difficulty, managed to prop myself up to greet him. But he had none of it; he went directly to the tray Drazir had brought, threw open the window, and threw it out into the sea. Whirling, he came and kneeled bedside me and forced me to drink deeply. He was furious, I gathered, and, something I was perplexed to see, trembling.

"Did the Captain eat any of that?" he asked breathlessly.

I told him that I had not, in a voice as clear as I could muster. Suddenly, he darted to my desk and brought my knife, pressing it into my hands. He told me to kill anyone that entered—I'm still chilled by this—and that he would return momentarily. As if I could've even held the thing aloft.

An explanation was in order, and I was soon to have one, though at the time, I wouldn't have cared even if the gates of Oblivion had opened up right in front of me.

Luckily, however, I had no unexpected visitors. Ya'zin-dar returned a few minutes later, bearing a fat medicine chest tinkling with bottles.

He told me that he was familiar Khajiiti medicinal lore, and hope that it would heal a man as well as it would I cat. I figured that it couldn't hurt to try, though I was well aware that it _could_ hurt. I simply didn't care.

First, he stripped my cot and laid down fresh sheets, took off my sweat-soaked nightshirt and replaced it with a new one, though doubtless it too would soon be drenched. Then, rummaging in his chest, he produced a small bundle of what appeared to be herbs and flowers, which he steeped in milk—the fire, I was surprised to note, was set by his own magick spark—to brew a kind of tea. Bile rose in my throat at the thought of dairy, but Ya'zin-dar insisted upon it. This, I know now, was intended to flush out my bowels.

And, I must relate, it succeeded in that purpose swimmingly. I wasn't keen on shitting in the presence of my mate, but it did not seem to bother him beyond surface revulsion; I gathered that given the situation, it was a necessary discomfort. He worked quickly, brewing another tea from some species of bark which smelled like anise mixed with mud. He strew sweet-smelling herbs and dried blooms around the cabin, and forced me to drain my waterskin countless times. A little later, he stole out stealthily once again, producing a tray of his own making—steamed roots, a broth with greens, and a plate of plain rice. I still did not wish to eat, but Ya'zin-dar was insistent, even going so far as to feed me himself. He twitched even more often now, yet his hands never faltered; I gather that it was some consequence of concentration, or perhaps he truly is a skooma fiend.

Somehow, I trusted him implicitly.

He worked in silence, for the most part, and I raised few complaints at his ministrations. Some of the brews tasted rather of shit, but that is to be expected even of Cyrodilic medicine. It was eventually necessary to change the bedding once more (by that time I could scarce govern my bowels), and the fever had not yet abated. He told me frankly that my night would be a hellish one, at best.

"It will eat the Captain from the inside," he hissed, " _The poison_."

Yes...I had been, _have_ been, poisoned.

At that, even in my delirious sickness I sat up, though I quickly regretted the decision. I barked at him to explain himself, choking as I did so.

"Someone on the ship has tried to kill the Captain," he whispered, "Or incapacitate him. Probably the latter."

The natural inquiries followed—the who, the why, the how. He regarded me curiously, and said, with a kind of bitter grimace, that I already knew very well who the culprit was.

J'Rasha, then.

"With Drazir as her instrument, no?"

The first mate nodded grimly.

"This one does not know how many other whorecats she has in her service...not yet, at least. But there _are_ others, Captain, let there be no mistake. This one knows of four already. How many more only Rajhin can guess. This one suspects there are many telling purring lies among us."

Rage rose in my belly along with the bubbling.

At the very least she does not hide it well. And I had thought the Khajiit maestros of subterfuge and deception! Perhaps the Stewardess is simply not suited to the purpose.

And how long, I asked, had he known that I had been poisoned?

He paused for a moment, the question passing over his features in the form of brief shudders of thought.

Finally, he admitted, "Of the _poisoning_ this one has known since this morning…" He trailed off, obviously leaving thoughts unvoiced. But I pleaded with him to disclose all.

Then, he told me the reason for his nightly vigils. And the consequences of this revelation I can still scarcely grasp.

Ya'zin-dar had _known_ , since the very first night, that something was amiss on this vessel. He had been a footpad of sorts, a member of the Renrijra Maor, something both less and more than a pirate—a mercenary, a freedom fighter, a saboteur. a scoundrel—and had learned the utility of reading the intricacies of faces, the intonation of voices.

From the outset, the atmosphere of the crew, which to me had smacked of coldness, to _him_ had read as , he had seen it—or rather, _heard_ it. The whispering, the huddled conferences away from his view, the whiff of _conspiracy_ that dissipated the moment he came too close.

And it seemed that his own insomniac nature was equaled only by his quarries. Thus, each night, he lay awake, endeavoring to catch some wind of the plot being hatched—to no avail.

For the moment, he knows only that Drazir, J'Rasha, Jaga (a well-worn deckhand—quiet and rippling with muscle), and Qazir (the purser, unsurprisingly) were the chief conspirators; others, well, none can say.

I was, and am, both surprised and strangely unsurprised. I asked the inevitable—if he had harbored suspicions since the beginning, why hadn't he confided them to me?

He sighed, and matched my gaze with his own, yellow eyes curiously lightless.

"This one does not wish to dwell upon past mistakes."

I mustered what iron I could.

"Had you performed your damn duty, perhaps we'd not be in the present fucking pickle."

He scowled at that, and looked, for a moment's breath, dejectedly down towards the boards.

"This one could prove nothing. This one thought, 'Maybe it is simply a kitten's delusions'..."

I was certainly in no position to scold him, seeing as he _had_ , at least for now, saved my life. But, I thought, if I am to reclaim the sliver of authority I have amongst this crew, I had best start here.

But, in truth, I was less concerned with laying blame and more concerned with anticipating the next movements of the conspirators.

Ya'zin, I'm sorry to note, is as uncertain as I am.

He has set guards whom he knows are unscrupulous and above suspicion, and a shift of similarly clean cats to watch my door at all hours.

Beyond that, we have begun our own gambit. Entrapping one of them—and introducing them to the whip. Or so I expect. What machinations Ya'zin has devised I do not know, but having been one hair short of a bandit, I imagine that he has had some experience in the art of creative interrogation.

Ya'zin has suggested Drazir. He says she is weak-willed, and that perhaps has even been intimidated into collaboration. I tend to agree—as I have noted, she seemed shaken when she brought me poisoned tray. I doubt that she's anything more than a tool.

"This one will break her," Ya'zin said with a vulpine grin. Considering the circumstances, I didn't know whether to shiver or to smile with him.

As for their ends, well, we can only speculate. Ya'zin suspects piracy, or a design of the Renrijra Maor to commandeer our vessel and use it as their own instrument, though he was quick to emphasize that he had burnt all bridges with his former cohorts.

But, if that is the case, how many of the crew are culpable? Surely such a mutiny would require the cooperation of a great number—far greater than four, to be sure. By the Eight, then, how many? The whole crew would have to be in on this wicked endeavor.

And what does this imply about Ab'soud? He selected a great deal of them himself, even saying that some of them had sailed together in the past.

What does he know? Is this his doing?

Ya'zin seems to doubt that, but his expression suggested that he was not certain. He says that if it is a conspiracy of a select few, then perhaps it is not a mutiny, but rather something more benign (if one could say that of a murderous plot).

Or something far more insidious than we might realize.

For now, we must do what we can. Drazir shall serve as our probe, and the others shall be seized in due course, if she tenders a confession. Meanwhile, we shall see how they behave in Drazir's absence.

Ya'zin was right—last night was a kind of hell. Despite his best efforts, I was convulsed with tremors, pangs, loose bowels, retching, searing fever, coughing, and gods know what else. Sleep came in fits and starts, but even still, it was a scarce commodity. Finally, after dawn, I fell into a restless slumber, a brief armistice, which persisted until an hour past noon.

I have managed to eat some food taken from my own stores—and which I know to be untainted by Drazir's meddling, at least of yet. Following that, with what strength I have, I have endeavored to set ink to page.

My vitality falters, however. This work, along with my measly repast, has occupied the space of two hours. The pain I fear is returning, though in diminished form. I shall take to my bed and rest a spell. I only hope that I won't have to down any more of that horrid tea..

I will call for Ya'zin soon. Perhaps he's made some progress.

—

I feel as if this is my tomb. Something _is_ happening above decks, and I am powerless to do anything about it. I am bound to my bed and the chamberpot. I can only trust in Ya'zin, skooma fiend or no; I pray that it is not ill-placed.

—

She appeared in my dreams, again, last night. Why I do not know. I dreamt we were lying upon a barge in Lake Rumare. She trailed her fingers in the black face of the water. She sighed, said my name, and then I awoke.

Dreams, of course, obey no logic except their own. She hates boats—ironic, then, that she loved a sailor, isn't it?

Sometimes, when I am alone, I think of her. I cannot escape her.

I will write more later. I can no longer hold my eyes open.

—

Can only write briefly.

Something has happened. It's well past midnight now, big moons, no clouds.

Ya'zin has taken Drazir and has her in the hold. An hour ago. J'Rasha shouldn't know, not yet at least. He and his posse are interrogating her as I write.

Still very sick, but don't know if I can sleep. Will write more if I'm able.

—

By the Eight, it's as we suspected.

Ya'zin came back, I couldn't sleep. Drazir succumbed easily, and revealed all.

Pirates, but not just any.

Dark Elves.

 _Slavers_.


	5. A Letter Penned to an Errant Lover

**IV: A Letter Penned to an Errant Lover**

* * *

 _ **Loredas, 16th Sun's Dawn, 2E 807**_

 _ **To my dearest Albinia,**_

I realize that this must come as some surprise to you. I can see you now, grimacing at the sight of my name upon this parcel, scrunching your nose the way you always do. I remember fondly how you used to do that whenever you scowled at me.

Sorry for that. I'm only on the 4th line and already I'm apologizing. I suspect that this letter will be riddled with such pleas for forgiveness. But, if you are able, I pray that you will find it in your heart to read what I have written.

At this point, of course, you must have crumpled this letter and cast it to the floor in anger. _He infuriates me_! you must be crying. _I promised myself, never again! Never again!_

And you have every right to your anger. I have lost count of the many vagaries of our love _ **—**_ the affairs, the false truces, the glorious ecstasies, the tear-stained skirmishes. As a soldier, I have not obeyed the unwritten laws of war. After our last conflict I should not be surprised if you were to plunge this envelope unopened into the nearest brazier. In the end, I tread on ground familiar to us both. What does it matter if I have finally recognized how deeply I have wounded you? The heart is fickle, promises frivolous, words capricious. What makes this anything more than one more brief reprieve in a war spanning decades?

At times, I think, there are tensions in our lives that build to a head and burst and break. Just as water poured into a glass rises and spills over in excess, so are we too like glasses and like water, only willing to accept so much before we run over and are emptied. And, my dearest Albinia, the waters of my life have spilled over, and with them have gone the infernal dregs which have lain on my heart for how long I do not know. The sea has delivered me and scoured me clean. Unlike ever before, I am empty, without course, without direction, caught in some kind of doldrums. But, perhaps undeservedly, that gives me the hope that the wind will fill my sails once more, and I will run freely over blue seas, at peace.

I pray, Albinia, that you shall read this letter. You're the only thing I have left.

I direct your attentions (should I command them at all) to the packet enclosed with this letter. Within is contained my captain's journal. This you should read before all of the rest. On the island, maintaining a chronicle of the day's events quickly became an...untenable proposition, especially considering my tendency towards ornament. I attempted to write, from time to time, but these rough sketches hardly yield anything useful. This account, however, which has been the project of several weeks writing (without a drop of brandy passing my lips, I should note _ **—**_ a condition of my convalescence) feverishly all throughout the day and deep into the night, will fill in the cracks.

I should explain myself though, briefly, before anything else. Allow me to begin at the beginning:

I have recently survived a shipwreck. But, I fear, that is not all.

After I left you that night in Kvatch _ **—**_ stealing into the darkness as if I were some vagabond _ **—**_ I went to find a ship. I will not ruminate upon my reasoning for abandoning you, for you know it already. And I pray to Stendarr to invoke his mercy for that grievous sin.

But I digress.

As you may well recall, I had then come into a modest, but quite comfortable sum of septims at the behest of my aunt's unfortunate but profitable demise in an equestrian accident (may she rest in peace, the moldy old hag). Ideally, I would have reclaimed _The Piebald Pate_ , but she was nowhere to be found. I still rue the day I sold her to that Breton rogue _ **—**_ you remember the one, Baltazar or Bartholomew or something like that, the one with the pot belly who stank of yeast _ **—**_ and shall until the end of my days. She was the best ship I ever sailed on. But I had found one better, or so I thought, at the shipyards of Bravil.

Her name was _Breath-of-Kyne_ , after the bull-god Morihaus. A Nibenese brigantine, made of strong timbers from the Jerrall. Fast and sleek, but made to stand a battering too. Her previous master had obviously loved her, and she exuded an aura of quality, charisma and character. There were a few holes to patch up, of course, but nothing irremediable. I went to Bravil searching for the sea, and I knew that I had found it. But another had gotten there before me.

His name was Ab'soud, a Khajiit. He was a merchant, the owner of a shipping firm in Leyawiin who was eager to expand his margins. I was surprised to meet a Khajiit so interested in commerciality, though I remember thinking _ **—**_ _About time_. You must know that they do not share our understanding of property. This Ab'soud, however, was decidedly cut of a different cloth.

Despite a pitched mêlée, he simply had more coin in his possession than I could ever hope to muster. The ship's caretaker was obviously pleased with our sport, and urged us on until he was suitably indulged. The bidding began at 100.000, which I thought a high, but reasonable price. She was worth it _ **—**_ the _Breath-of-Kyne_ oozed craftsmanship from every board. But Ab'soud was insatiable. I fell behind at 160.000 and was left in the dust, while the cat batted away tepid offers from less impassioned bidders. The agreed upon sum was finally set at 230.000 golden septims, which drew gasps of astonishment from the audience and cries of ecstasy from the owner. To further our bewilderment, this Ab'soud produced the agreed upon coin from some compartment of his robes, and paid the man in gold septims, hard cold cash, right before our eyes. And even more riotous, he immediately approached me, agog as I was, and offered captainship of the vessel and employment in his firm.

One might say it was a spectacle.

I knew that in Ab'soud I had made the acquaintance of a clever little fiend. He appeared to be an older cat, with patches of silver streaking his coat of ruddy brown. He had small and quick eyes, the color of red gold. He walked with a limp of sorts, as if he suffered from an old injury _ **.**_ I once suggested that he make use of a cane, but he was quick to shrug off the idea.

"Khajiit do not walk with man-stick. We _stick_ man. Hahaha!"

It would be safe to say, I think, that we were fast friends. It would be safe to say too, without hesitation, that I was, and _am_ , a fool.

Ab'soud's firm was in Leyawiin, and there it was decided that the _Breath-of-Kyne_ would be based.

I was somewhat bewildered by the city. I had passed through the place, but never spent any real time there, as I've always preferred Bravil as a port-of-call. Although for nearly all of its history it was a mannish city, the few centuries it has rested in Khajiiti dominion seems to have removed all traces of it from the Mundus. Well, I should say its mannish _populace_. A great deal of structures remain from the Second Empire and even from before. Say what you want about the Khajiit, but one cannot claim that they have no eye for aesthetics. The new buildings complement the old with a gratifying unity, and the city on the whole is quite beautiful, despite the hogwash you might hear that it's been turned into a skooma den. I've _been_ to quite a number of skooma dens myself (as, I hasten to add, have you), and thus I can attest to the falsehood of that claim.

Though many Imperials, and indeed many of the mannish and merish races, can be found crowding the wharves, we are a rarer sight in Leyawiin proper. I rented a small room, not much more than a closet, above a tavern which had been standing since, judging by the style (heavily ornamented and painted wood, a broad inner court centered around a pagoda housing a shrine to Alessia), the time of the Longhouse Emperors. It was owned by a leonine Khajiit named Karjazz, who had been raised in the Heartlands and even spoke in the first person. His inn was open to travellers of all races, and he kept a number of small rooms for rent upstairs with Cyrodilic accouterments for the odd Niben ship captain.

I found life in Leyawiin fascinating, if difficult. Karjazz eagerly conveyed me about the city, trying _ **—**_ and, to a degree, failing _ **—**_ to teach me Khajiiti culture. It was overwhelming, to say the least. It is said that at first brush, one is enamored with a foreign culture and finds its pleasures bottomless, before, like fermenting fish, its more unsavory perfumes begin to reach one's nostrils. It is easy to become disillusioned. And such frustration can be doubly potent among the Khajiit.

But I acclimated, after a time, coming to terms and overcoming the things which at first perplexed me. The food was, I remember, the first thing. I remember living off bread and wine during an idyll in Senchal; I was repulsed by Khajiiti cuisine's sickly sweetness. But after a time, I came to savor it, even _crave_ it, though I do not claim that it is anything more than an acquired taste. With it came an appreciation for sugar itself, though I fear that I am as susceptible as all men to its psychotropic properties. The rest followed suit, though I still cannot say that I understand their culture in anything more than a rudimentary sense. Hard to teach an old dog new tricks, especially when cats are involved.

But I tell far more than required, as per my custom.

I found, to my surprise and initial dismay, that Ab'soud, although appearing to have been a wealthy man, had spent much of his funds on the purchase of the _Breath-of-Kyne_ , along with the rent for his newly acquired warehouses _ **—**_ which, I should note, had nothing in them to ship! At first, I thought that I had been bamboozled. Yet the cat had a way with words, a way of stymying one's fears with the flick of his tongue. I questioned whether or not I should remain in Leyawiin after that. But, despite everything, I stayed for the ship.

Ab'soud had a great deal of connections both in Leyawiin and in greater Nibenay. On top of my own, we had quite the portfolio. To build up capital, he loaned the _Breath-of-Kyne_ out to various clients in and around Topal Bay _ **—**_ for instance, the Brothers Petritatus of Bravil, for whom I conveyed some shipments to Morrowind and various entrepôts in Black Marsh. Then there was Martius Lucius, a rare Cyrodiil operating out of Leyawiin, whose own ship was in the process of being repaired but whose crew was able and whose orders needed delivery _ **—**_ for him I dropped anchor at Stros M'kai, Wayrest, Auridon. You would be surprised, I think, to know how much coin one can get as a courier. Port dues are oh-so-bothersome.

Yet I was baffled at just how much Ab'soud was able to procure through his own channels. It seems peculiar now, even wretched, at how much we reveled at others' expense. Within the span of half a year we had gathered the necessary funds to begin financing our own expedition, and much of it was gained by illegality, deceit, and plain cheating.

One night, we celebrated in a particularly raucous manner in the warehouse. Ab'soud had a hankering for whores, and we had had them. It was rather late into the evening, and the whores had gone to bed. The moons (as they know them, Jone and Jode) could be perceived through the high windows beyond our ring of candlelight. It was humid, sweltering even, and the wine had done nothing to assuage the issue. I was prattling off some drunken nonsense, when, all of a sudden, the cat fixed me with a curious look that, even in my inebriation, caused me to pause mid-bawdy and ask, "Well, what is it?" It was then that Ab'soud's plan was hatched.

I admitted that pawning moon sugar off on the Anvil black market would be a brilliant gambit, if it could be pulled off. Despite Anvil's ill-repute, the city has, as you might know, in the past decade come under the sway of a rather prudish administrator by the name of Kilben Vass, who recaptured the city from the Red Sails with the aid of mercenaries paid for by Kvatch. This Vass, of course, is just another of those upjumped warlords with delusions of restoring the Empire that've been sprouting up along the Gold Coast like mushrooms. An ostensibly pious man, he has tried to pull out Anvil's evils, which have dug themselves deep after years of pirate rule, by the roots. To some degree he has succeeded in that endeavor. All ships coming into port are subject to exhaustive searches that, for the most part, result in damages to the ship which go uncompensated by the port authority. Whatever "unsavory" cargoes discovered are confiscated and placed under lock and key in the municipal warehouses, though I'm certain they don't remain there long. The word is that Vass himself sells the stuff at foreign markets (such as Senchal), and with the coin he funds elaborate building projects, lining his own pockets in the process. One can't say that he doesn't have the right idea. It's undoubtedly ingenious, at least theoretically. The trouble is that the man has no sense of subtlety _ **—**_ after all, he is Colovian. A pity, really.I hope he's enjoying his brief time in the sun.

In any event, Anvil, a rather excellent haven for the damned and the n'er-do-well had been and still is starved of a most precious commodity: moon sugar. Oh, certainly the craftier thieves had managed to smuggle some of the stuff in _ **—**_ after all, when there's a will, there's a way _ **—**_ but it was simply not enough to sate the rabid appetites of the skooma fiends and sugar junkies of the city. What we envisioned was a kind of mass injection of product into the market, bought cheaply from Ab'soud's trusted source in Senchal, and sold at exorbitant rates. Simple, of course, but it was the right place and the right time. If it could be done, we had to do it now, before the gig was up.

But could it be done? From what I'd heard, Vass struck me as one of those fools blessed with maddeningly dumb luck. Even the most carefully laid plans are upset by his machinations, or so the story goes. A thick chain is stretched across the harbor mouth, patrolled by a handful of warships packed to the gills with kitted out men-at-arms. Secret compartments and Illusion spells were foibled early on, and every crew is Silenced upon coming into port. A mesh barrier, suspended below the chain and enchanted to detect both Life and Magicka, rules out Water Breathing divers or magicka-propelled submersibles. To boot, the landward side of the city is equally well-fortified: a ten o'clock curfew and martial law by night, the entrance to the sewers under constant guard, the battlements patrolled by crossbowmen, battlemages, and sharpshooters, and the city perimeter heavily mined to prevent burrowing beneath the walls. The whole place is as tightly wound as a puckered arse. It seems that the only way to breach the city's defenses is by force or a master stroke of subterfuge.

Ab'soud's solution, frankly, was ridiculous, but just ridiculous enough that it might actually work. We would enter the city neither by land nor by sea, but by air. The method would make use of an obscure spell by the name of Icarian Flight. The thrust of the thing is simple enough: once cast, the user may launch themselves at immense speed high into the air for the duration of seven seconds or less. Then, they come tumbling down. For our purposes, it had a number of advantages over typical Levitation. For one, we prioritized speed above all, as well as height, in order to avoid detection by the sentries posted atop the walls and Vass' Life and Magicka barriers. While one could theoretically reach such heights and speeds with Levitation, one would either have to have a lot of time on their hands, or be a rather powerful mage. We had neither of those things; thus, Icarian Flight provided us with what we needed most for a lesser premium. Ab'soud's plan also involved the usage of a Chameleon spell as camouflage, and a Feather enchantment, which would allow our "courier" to convey the cargo of moon sugar with relative ease. Both would've been taxing to maintain along with a potent Levitation spell. While we had the means to hire a good mage, even considering that we had to provision the ship and buy the cargo, Ab'soud argued that the task could be completed simply and comparatively cheaply with a scroll of Icarian Flight, which he could have made by a trusted enchanter who owed him a favor _ **—**_ perhaps you're beginning to see that Ab'soud had many such "trusted associates" and "contacts". I thought that such an important part of our mission (indeed, the entire crux of it) should be entrusted to a capable mage, but once again, Ab'soud dismissed my concerns. Only later did I realize that his refusal to enlist a mage for our voyage was deliberate in more ways than one.

The whole thing would be carefully choreographed. It almost felt like we were planning a mananauts' voidwalk rather than a heist to sell illegal goods on the black market _ **—**_ and, in a way, we were. Ab'soud brought in one of his many associates, a Khajiiti mathematician who had studied at the University of Gywlim (or so she said; I have reason to doubt that anything Ab'soud is true) to take measurements and plan out the minutiae _ **—**_ how many nautical miles out from port we should launch from, accounting for wind speed, drag, velocity, speed, momentum, the weight of the cargo and of the "courier" themselves (who I later found out was Ya'zin-dar; you'll come to know him in time), when precisely to cast Slowfall, etc., etc. Eventually, a trajectory was calculated. Ab'soud's contact on the ground in Anvil, an Imperial merchant by the name of Lucius Decimus who was sympatico with the city guard, would arrange for the landing zone to be cleared for two minutes. That was all the commandant of the guard could promise. If we failed to make it within that window, the courier would be arrested, interrogated, and likely tortured, and Decimus would squawk so as not to be implicated _ **—**_ the commandant had him by the balls, to say it crudely. Consequently, the ship would be impounded, and the whole thing would have gone all to Oblivion. If, however, the courier reached the landing zone safely, Decimus would have him conveyed to the safe house, and the commandant would turn a blind eye _ **—**_ for a cut of the sugar of course.

In short, it was an incredibly risky enterprise. However, if we pulled it off, if it was possible...we'd be rich. Perhaps I was drunk out of my wits, too naive, too much of a damned fool _ **—**_ but I agreed.

Preparations were made, a crew was gathered, an itinerary made, provisions purchased, and by Last Seed of last year we were off on the high seas.

And that's how it all began. If you've reached this point, you may begin reading the diary. It is a painful slog, which will no doubt make your eyes roll and your frown deepen, but I assure you, it is crucial to understanding what really happened.

Then, I'll tell you how we were betrayed.

 **Part V coming soon!**


	6. An Encounter at Sea

**V: In Which There Is an Encounter at Sea**

 **Warning** : **Graphic violence**.

 **Note** : **This is one of the first battle scenes I've ever written**. **I apologize in advance if it seems a bit awkward compared to the rest**. **I'll likely be making various small edits to this chapter throughout the coming days to make everything flow a little bit better, as well as fixing any grammatical/spelling errors (which tend to pop up in longer chapters like these)**. **If you have any suggestions** , **don't hesitate to share them with me**.

 **-YP**

* * *

If you have read up to the end of the entries that I enclosed within this letter, then you should know that the the unwitting protagonist of this tale languishes belowdecks, wracked by poison. Dark Elf slavers have just been sighted in the distance, and an attempted mutiny has been uncovered, a foul conspiracy whose purpose we could only begin to surmise. It is here where the gears begin to shift, the screws begin to turn, the seas begin to change. The winds that will propel us towards the great crucible of our lives can already be felt, gently dashing themselves against our sails. Soon, our mission in Anvil will be nothing but a distant dream, and we shall find ourselves caught in the maw of a crimson nightmare.

But let us not rush headlong towards that destination.

As my final journal entry before the storm reported, Ya'zin rushed into my quarters following Drazir's interrogation with a grim revelation, something far worse than any mutiny.

"Slavers, captain, slavers! Bastards! _Renrij_!" he spat, just barely containing his rage. "But...that is not all."

The mere fact that we were being preyed upon by slavers was shocking, if unsurprising. They are known to ply the waters off the wild coasts of Valenwood, Black Marsh, and Elsweyr, secreting themselves in hidden coves and striking out by night to prey upon unsuspecting passersby. But what Ya'zin told me next was nigh on unbelievable.

"What more, Ya'zin?" I asked, pulling myself upright, my voice cracking, "What's happening? Out with it!"

He sat down at the foot of the bed, his back towards me, beyond the ring of candlelight that emanated from my bedside table. His voice was different than before, small and chipped like an old teapot. It sent a chill down my spine.

"We have been tricked, captain. This one never would have thought...this one never could have imagined...this one knew that such things happened, but he never guessed, he never considered...Does the Captain understand? This one has seen many things—ugly things, terrible things. This one has _done_ many things—awful things, dreadful things, horrible things. But…"

"What is it?" I pressed, becoming irritated with his reticence.

It was then that Ya'zin spilled the proverbial beans.

Drazir, Jaga, J'Rasha, and all of their thrice-damned fellow conspirators, the whole lot of them were in on the slave trade. They had been giving directions to the slavers shadowing us along the coast ever since we had departed from Senchal, signals in the dark, while the rest of the crew was slumbering in their beds. This is what Ya'zin had observed during his nightly vigils.

I immediately remembered J'Rasha persisting that we hug the coast of Valenwood on our way to Anvil, and the reason behind it was now blindingly obvious. In opting for the Goldhorn Current, we had undermined their plans; had we indeed kept to our previous course, we would have been easy pickings. But despite the change in itinerary, the slavers had still managed to pursue us out of sight and into deeper waters all thanks to the machinations of the conspirators. We must've been quite the prize for the rats to venture so far away from the coast—such creatures tend to favor smaller, lighter, swifter vessels not meant to withstand long voyages or stout seas. And it was no wonder: ours was a ship packed to the gills with brawny Khajiiti sailors, lightly armed, captained by a buffoon, with a secret cargo of fine refined moonsugar in the hold. If they managed to capture the lot, they would not only make a killing at the slave auctions, but would be able to attempt their own Anvil gambit, _and_ walk away from it all with a fine ship to boot. Certainly a step up from the common slaver.

It was then that a thought that chilled me to the bone crossed my mind. Something I didn't want to imagine, something I didn't want to believe, something that was too incredible, too inconceivable, but yet which was the _only_ logical conclusion that I could consider. The conspirators directed the slavers, but who had placed the conspirators? How had the slavers known of the Anvil scheme? Who had payed them?

All roads led to one man, or rather one _cat_ —that wretched old cankerwort, Ab'soud.

"Yes, the captain says it true. Ab'soud! _Khrajar_! Never since Rajhin has there been a such a scoundrel!" Ya'zin hissed, pounding his claws on his knees.

Everything began to fall into place. I had always wondered where Ab'soud had acquired such a vast sum, in cash no less, for his purchase of the _Breath-of-Kyne_. If he had had the backing of a Great House—likely House Dres, Morrowind's slave masters par excellence, which furnishes slaves for all the rest—however, then such an amount would have been feasible, especially if its investment promised such rich returns. I imagined that Ab'soud had been a slave on a Dres plantation, and had been, after a particularly savage beating, maimed and thus rendered useless in the saltrice fields. Being the clever little devil that he is, and wishing to save his own skin, perhaps he had found a way to make himself useful to his master. He was very obviously no neophyte when it came to the realm of commerce, but rather something bordering on an expert; perhaps he had been instructed in the merchant's art, and then sent abroad to ply it for Dres' benefit. I imagine that Ma'zaka had been employed for the same purpose, and was working quietly in Senchal for his Dark Elf masters. I remembered that Redguard woman who had been branded with the mark of a slave...What had that meant?

All of this was, and still is, merely conjecture. The simple fact is that I will likely never know who Ab'soud really was and what he was up to. When I returned to Leyawiin after our ordeal I found our warehouses and offices empty, bereft of all sign of his ever having been there. No one knew where he had gone, but it's said that one morning he simply vanished, taking all of the contents of the warehouses with him. Since then I've heard no word of him, and don't really care to. At the time, it was the one thing that Ya'zin and I could conclude with the knowledge we we had, and I believe that it is a credible, and horrifying deduction.

Had I ever noticed something off about him? Had I ever looked into his eyes and thought that this was a person who could condemn his own fellows lives of misery, toil, and servitude? To a long and torturous death? Had I ever wondered if he was capable of murder and brutality? Together, of course, we had deceived others. We had carried out acts of petty crime—theft, robbery, even an arson (on a rival's warehouses; none, I hasten to add, were injured). But there are orders of magnitude to such things just as there are layers to an onion, and I had never imagined that he was anything else than a loveable rogue like me. In truth, I had liked Ab'soud. I had considered him a dear friend, a kindred spirit.

And I had imagined that he felt the same way.

What, in this horrific plot of his, did he intend for me? Was I to be enslaved too, and packed off to Morrowind to work in the fields till I dropped? Was I to be captured and brought back in chains to the cat himself, so he could gloat and laugh at my idiocy? Or was I merely a footnote? Someone who was expendable, to be gutted and thrown overboard after the fact? " _Toss the silly man to the slaughterfish,_ "?

To this day, I've never found out, and likely I never will.

It seemed like Ab'soud's raspy cackle echoed from across the sea. I could see the old bastard in my mind's eye counting his freshly earned septims, puffing on a skooma pipe, a whore on each arm. In that moment, I think, both Ya'zin and I realized the enormity of our foolishness—I, for ever having trusted Ab'soud, for having fallen headlong into his trap; and Ya'zin for not having put an end to the traitorous cabal's scheming earlier, for waiting, for hesitating, for allowing a ship of seventy-two unwitting souls to be held at their mercy.

Guilt. Guilt is what we felt.

And rage, too.

For a Khajiit to sell their own littermates, fellow children of the moons...there is perhaps no greater crime. To impose upon a fellow Khajiit the idea that they can be owned, that they can be bartered and bought and sold, that they are _property_ , well...You must understand, Albinia, that the very notion of property is one that does not have much clout amongst the Khajiit. Or at least _our_ conception of property differs greatly from their own. And to be sure, the concept of slavery is _nowhere_ to be found within their formulation. It is, both to them and to myself, a hateful thing. It has clapped uncounted thousands, even millions, of Khajiit and Argonian souls in irons in Morrowind; yet the common man or mer in Wayrest or Firsthold or (Eight forbid) Bravil only rarely turn their minds to thoughts of those beastfolk breaking their backs in kwama mines or toiling beneath the slave driver's whip on Telvanni and Indoril plantations.

I myself, I lament to admit, was once the very same.

In any case, the most pressing question was, of course, what to do next. We were a merchant vessel, not a warship. We had some armaments, aye, but certainly not enough to repel assault by Dark Elf slavers.

"How long do we have?" I asked, wiping the sweat from my brow.

"This one does not know...Drazir could not say where they were. This one thinks she is not the cat to question," Ya'zin replied, rising from the bed and adjusting his belt. "This one has sent his gang after J'Rasha and Jaga, but there will not be much time to play with them, Ya'zin thinks, or to claw the rats from their holes. The _renrij_ come while the moons are out…"

He trailed off, and in the half-light I saw him rest a claw upon the pommel of his talwar.

"We must prepare for them, then. Do not be afraid, Captain. This one knows the way of such things," he purred, his voice striking a sinister timbre, "Ya'zin-dar will make them curse their mothers for bringing them into the world." Then, he laughed, a dry and cold and bitter laugh, like dry leaves crackling underfoot. An intuition snuck upon me then, something that I couldn't quite articulate. I knew in that moment, more than I ever had before, that the creature standing before me was a killer capable of anything.

Good thing that he was on my side.

Ya'zin gave a terse nod, and turned to leave. But I wasn't done with him.

"Ya'zin," I called out. Stopping in his tracks, he turned back around and regarded me with a wide grin, his yellowing fangs gleaming dully in the candlelight.

"What does the Captain require of this one?"

"Bring me that bottle there," I ordered, gesturing to a dusty green flagon of antique Chorrol brandy that I had been saving for the successful completion of the Anvil mission. No longer—I wanted a drink, and didn't care if it was the finest vintage Alto or firewater licked from an ogre's arse. I uncorked the thing, grabbed two pewter goblets from my bedside table, and poured us each a good swig.

"Here," I grunted, handing a goblet to Ya'zin, which he took gladly. I held my own aloft and proposed:

"To freedom."

Down the hatch.

Damn good stuff, as smooth as butter on the tongue. A shame, really, that it's gone; amongst all my effects aboard the ship, I daresay it was my most prized possession. Other than the cameo I had made of you, of course…

No? Too much? I thought it to be rather romantic myself.

I digress, in any case.

"Ya'zin," I began, before a glob of phlegm caught in my throat suddenly rose to my palate, preventing me from proceeding any further.

There was a positively gleeful look in the cat's eye as he queried, almost seductively, "Yes?"

Finally, I managed to hack the stoppage out, accompanied by a hearty gob of fresh snot. In the firmest tone I could muster, I looked him square and the eye and declared (all while wiping my nose of the unwelcome mucus, I might add), "From this moment forward until I have sufficiently recuperated, you are the acting captain of this vessel and may make any and all decisions at your own discretion. I've but one final order—Get us out of this mess and back home in one piece. Is that understood?"

Ya'zin beamed, his smile as ferocious as any lion's.

"How is it said? 'Aye aye, Captain'?"

"That's right," I replied.

"Very well. This one shall do as ordered."

"I'm counting on you, Ya'zin. Don't let me down this time."

At that, he gave a curt nod. Then, he was gone.

—

The following I know principally from what was reported to me by the crew in the aftermath. You must forgive me, my love, if my description of these events falls short of the caliber that generally emerges from the storied Silanus stylus. I apologize; had I been capable of standing without retching my guts out, I surely would myself have participated in the fighting, and therefore would have been able to furnish a more visceral account of events on deck. Alas, in a most pitiable state I remained trapped in my quarters, gripped by nausea and fever, at the mercy of our foes and, lamentably, of the bottle. Foolishly, in an attempt to induce sleep, and to drown at least a small measure of my pain and sorrow, I drank rather a lot of brandy. This, naturally, did nothing to assuage my condition, but rather intensified its ill effects. In the end I failed both in endeavors.

But I shall not further enumerate such gruesome particulars—at least, not these. Let us instead turn to the thrust of the matter.

Ya'zin, better than I ever could have, assumed absolute command of the ship in my absence. After gathering the crew together, he debriefed them on the situation: a conspiracy had been discovered whose aim was to sell them all into slavery. Immediately, there were accusations that I had orchestrated the plot, but Ab'soud hastened to add that I had been poisoned by one of the conspirators and was confined to my bed. No, he declared—the conspiracy had been organized by _Khajiit_ , their own fellow crewmembers. And the grand mastermind behind it all? Why, none other than the greatest rogue in all Nirn, our employer, Ab'soud himself.

Cries of outrage, fury, disbelief. Tears.

Who? Who? Who? Who could have done such a thing? Who could possibly have done such a thing? How could one Khajiit sell another? How was it possible?

It was then that Ab'soud revealed the known conspirators—Drazir, J'Rasha, and Jaga. By that time, the latter two had been brought into custody, and were likely being introduced to the whip in the brig. But Ya'zin claimed that he knew they were not the only ones; others were likely hiding amongst the rest, shaking in their skins as he spoke. Of course, with the crew in such a frenzy as they were, a brawl of sorts broke out, with more than a few ending up nursing stab wounds, scratched eyes, cracked ribs, and broken noses on the boards—you know how such feuds can be amongst we sailors. They needed someone, anyone, upon whom they could vent their frustrations, let loose their fury with balled fists (or claws). In the end, however, the final accomplice in this devilish scheme was found out while trying to beat a stealthy escape overboard. He was a quiet, older, one-eyed Cathay-raht named Dro'Barri. Like Jaga, he was a mere deckhand, but a veritable titan of fur and muscle. Ya'zin and I suspected that he and Jaga were enforcers, Drazir little more than a malleable instrument, and J'Rasha the real strategian behind the whole affair. Or perhaps appearances deceived—in any case, we never did much quibble with such details.

Dro'Barri's comeuppance was, perhaps unsurprisingly, swift and uncompromising in its brutality. I must warn you in advance, my dear, that what follows is rather disagreeable.

First (this goes almost without saying), he was beaten to a fine pulp. Next, his remaining eye was plucked out. A minor fracas broke out over who would have it, but eventually Ra'jhera, the bosun, was the victor. The balls went next, another gruesome trophy. His cock, once severed, was forced down his throat till he was impelled to swallow. You must recall that Khajiiti members are barbed. That alone nearly killed him outright, due to the piercing of the esophagus and consequent internal bleeding, but still the crew was not satisfied. Next went the tongue, the nose, the tail, the arms, and the legs. All of this, I was told, Dro'Barri suffered in silence, without even once crying out.

In the aftermath, he was left barely alive; but Ya'zin was adamant that he should not be killed so easily. A turncoat such as Dro'Barri couldn't get off the hook just like that. Rather, he proposed a more creative and excruciating torment for the traitor. Ropes were prepared; an incision was made; and finally, Dro'Barri was lashed to the bow, his orifices stuffed with honeycakes to attract the flies, the ruby ribbons of his entrails dangling in the breeze, a feast for the gulls.

A monstrous figurehead for the _Breath-of-Kyne_ , and a grisly curse against all traitors. I cannot say that the man-bull would have disapproved.

What can I say? Do I agree with the manner of his treatment? Of course not. But do I understand their fury? Certainly. And could I have done anything to stop them, had I been there? No.

Not without having joined Dro'Barri on the bow.

I don't know precisely when he died, but he could not have survived much longer after his ordeal.

Despite it all, I pray that he has found peace in death.

—

A violent mob, when properly directed (though perhaps that is something of an oxymoron), is a rather potent tool. Of course, one cannot expect perfect fidelity to one's directives. In his bloodlust, the enraged brute might seek satiation through other means, desiring to enrich himself through plunder or satisfy his appetites through violation and slaughter. In this manner has every city been sacked, and every revolution waged, throughout history. Without a steady hand of guidance, a rabid horde can quickly become unmanageable, and before one realizes it, what was previously a host of loyal, disciplined troops can metamorphosize into a swarm of beasts, each of which answers to their own desires alone and no others, deaf to the commands of their superiors and the words of their fellows.

The first act of violence had been committed aboard the _Breath-of-Kyne_. The crew had found an outlet for their rage, but still they were not satiated. Posthaste, they began to clamor for the other conspirators to be brought up from the brig so that they could put yet more gruesome tortures to the test. Luckily, Ya'zin was able to regain control of the situation. Before, he had exuded an air of shiftiness and enigma. But now? I had seen it in my quarters—that touch of madness and savagery, that look in his eyes that said that he was capable of anything, any cruelty, any atrocity. With that gleam in his eyes he was able to briefly order the chaos and funnel it into a proper use.

The armory, such as it was, was raided. Ya'zin organized squadrons of crossbowcats to assume the masts and the rigging. What spears and blades could be found were distributed amongst the crew, though the majority was given to what Ya'zin dubbed his ad hoc marine corps, which would repel any boarding parties; Sholani, the thick Tojay-raht carpenter, was given command. Others were put to the task of fabricating makeshift firebombs—fashioned of pieces of cloth soaked in oil, inserted into wine bottles, and then set ablaze and thrown. A brazier was lit, and a similar technique would be used for creating fire arrows for those wielding bows or crossbows on the decks themselves. Additionally, a great vat of oil was brought from the mess, and set to boil; this would poured down upon any would-be boarders. You can see that the thrust of Ya'zin's strategy was to set the enemy ship (and the enemy themselves) ablaze in whatever way we could, and massacre any unlucky bastards who managed to make it aboard. But our means were few. Ya'zin could certainly attempt to organize a disciplined fighting force, but we lacked the necessary weaponry to arm the crew entire. Boards from the deck were pulled up and used as makeshift clubs, and, with their rusty nails, these actually made rather effective instruments of war. But, in the end, Ya'zin was forced to simply cobble together anything that might even _remotely_ resemble a weapon—forks, spoons, plates, barrels of water, ropes, whole rounds of cheese, even a massive side of beef that was eventually set alight and thrown. The ship became quite a bit lighter after that, with so much ballast gone. Even in my quarters I noted that we began to lean a tad to the left,

In a little more than an hour the crew was prepared for battle. Ya'zin mounted the crow's nest, gazing out into the darkness, searching for any sign of the slavers. The night was bright, lit splendidly by the moons and the luminescence of the stars, but there was still no trace of the enemy.

And so, in silence, they waited.

—

Two hours after midnight, finally, they came.

" _There_!" Ya'zin hissed. All eyes turned to starboard.

It was a small, low ship, black with black sails. Ya'zin had only spotted it due to the gleam of moonslight on steel—a sword or spear, he surmised. Silently, it maintained a fast clip due south, straight towards us.

"Ready yourselves!" he boomed, descending from the crow's nest to the rigging. The crew roared in anticipation. Ya'zin, training his spyglass upon the approaching ship, was able to make out around thirty elves, armed and armored to the teeth. But worst of all? They had a mage.

Ya'zin bellowed for Ra'jhera's squadron, located on the foremast and closest to the rapidly advancing vessel, to take aim at eleven o'clock, and the squads on the main and mizzen likewise. The slavers' speed could not have been natural—they were beating against the wind, and Ya'zin had seen no rowers. Magic, then, was the only logical conclusion. It was clear at that point that this would be no tavern scuffle.

Then, suddenly, an enchanted voice—a female voice—floated across the water. In broken Ta'agra, it pronounced, "We shall be brief. Lay down your arms and surrender, and you shall come to no harm."

Of course they wouldn't! Why damage valuable merchandise?

That only elicited a bluster of laughter and derision from the crew. Ya'zin delivered a rather apt response: "This one would sooner fuck a guar than be a slave to the red eyed whores. This one shits on your whore mothers and your whore gods! _Ha ha ha_!"

The whole crew took up the refrain, howling with laughter and flinging curses. The Dark Elves, of course, did not reply.

Instead, a moment later, a spout of flame suddenly burst atop the forecastle, sending two Khajiit flying high into the air. They smacked against the glassy surface of the water after what seemed like an eternity and slipped beneath the waves, dead as doornails.

It had begun.

" _FIRE_!" Ya'zin roared. A cry of rage flew across the water, accompanied by three volleys of arrows. The fire arrows were lit, and followed shortly afterwards.

Then, another explosion rocked the ship, blowing off the rudder—effectively crippling us—and throwing debris—sharp spikes of timber—up into the air, showering the Khajiit below. Fire rained down on the mast squads, setting the topsails of the main and fore masts alight. Suddenly, almost in the blink of an eye, the vessel had drawn up beside us, and a hook had been thrown over the railing. They were preparing to board.

Ya'zin screamed for Sholani and his marines to gird themselves for battle. They scrambled to the oil vat, trying to heave the thing up and over onto the slavers trying to climb up. Two crewmen took arrows and had to be dragged off, and another was set aflame by a wanton fireball and tumbled into the sea.

Meanwhile, the deck and mast squads were firing furiously, taking down six foes with their arrows. Utensils and sides of beef rained down. The gangs of cabin cats finally lit the firebombs, and hurled them down en masse—that did some damage. The enemy sail, at last, was ignited, raining down globs of flaming oil on the attackers. And finally, after the loss of four Khajiit, the marines managed to tip the oil out of the vat and onto the wretches below. But that was the last of it; and so the vat itself was heaved overboard, casting one fiend into the sea.

But the slavers' retribution was terrible. Yet another eruption of flame shook the ship, and shattered the foremast at its foundation. In a moment's breath, the entire mass began to plunge into the sea. The squad, at least most of them, managed to leap across to the main mast, but not all—and so five of my crew lost themselves to the waves. And despite the efforts of the deck squad and the marines, some slavers had finally managed to come aboard.

The mêlée had begun. Well armored, the bastards wrought no small amount of death on the marines. Sholani himself lost his life in the struggle, after being run through on the tip of a sword. But it was not all on the enemy's side—four of the slavers were killed in the fighting, their weapons claimed by the marines and put to better use.

Even so, all the while the mage continued to wreak destruction. Her attacks were not so much concentrated upon the crew themselves—after all, they were precious cargo—but on incapacitating the ship. Even if we managed to make it out of the fight in one piece, we'd still be little more than sitting ducks at the mercy of the wind and the waves. Already, one mast and rudder down, we were totally immobilized.

Ya'zin knew very well that she would have to be eliminated if we were to walk away from this with our liberty intact. This was very obviously a rather powerful mage; but like all mages, she was not without her frailties. Mage or no, steel was still steel. And so he made a rather rash decision: unsheathing his talwar, he dove from the main mast headlong into the flaming sea below. By that time, nearly all of the boarders had made it onto the ship and were engaged in a bloody mêlée, leaving their precious mage unguarded.

And so it was rather a simple thing for a cat known for his shiftiness and his madness to creep aboard, rush in with talwar aloft, and run her through. With his own spark he set the slavers' vessel ablaze, and with a triumphant laugh he climbed back aboard the _Breath-of-Kyne_ and rejoined the fray.

After that the tides turned. Seeing their trump card slain and their ship in flames, the slavers began to grow desperate. No longer was this a mere slave raid, but a struggle for survival. And so they fought furiously, taking down no small number of the crew.

No one could say how long the battle raged. Some, wounded and exhausted, merely languished out of sight. Others lost themselves in the heat of the moment, time passing not in a steady stream, but in fits and starts.

In the end, however, the last foe fell to the sweep of Ra'jhera's talwar, and the day was ours, for all the good it did us.

—

I had passed the battle shaking underneath my bed, clutching my dagger to my breast and expecting the worse.

An unnatural quiet had fallen over the ship, and I thought that perhaps the slavers had been victorious. Thus, when I heard the door to my quarters groan open, I steeled myself for death.

Until I heard a soft voice inquire, "Captain?"

It could be none other than Za'nir.

Trembling, I crept from my hiding place, my eyes searching in the half-light of dawn for the pilot. At last I found him vacillating in the doorway, not daring to enter.

His eyes glowed eerily in the darkness. "Come," he said, and offered me his hand. I could hardly stand, but he steadied me.

"What's happened?" I whispered.

"We have won," he replied.

The deck was a scene of horror—blood, viscera, severed heads and limbs, vomit, the like. I do not care to record it all. and, I daresay, neither do you care to read them. Dawn was beginning to break on the horizon, white and grey and murky, like spoiled milk, or perhaps phlegm.

Ya'zin came before me, his coat matted with blood. His eyes were wild and feral, and he still wore that sinister grin. He seemed unperturbed by the carnage around us.

"Captain," he began lightly, with a touch of whimsy, "Look! We have destroyed them! We have won!" He laughed then, as shrilly as a banshee, and the crew along with him.

I could hardly find the words. I would have retched, had I anything else left to spew. Za'nir steadied me again, not sharing in the delight of the rest.

"Does the Captain wish for this one to fetch water?" he asked, but I shook him off.

"Ya'zin," I ventured, "Count the dead, will you?"

Then, I returned to my quarters, and lost myself to sleep.

In the end, we lost thirty-nine souls that night, nearly half of our number. One might almost call it an equivalent exchange.


	7. A Shipwreck

**VI: In Which There is a Shipwreck**

* * *

We drifted.

Rudderless and down a mast, we could do little else. A sight revealed that we were leagues away from the nearest land, the Dominion Isles between Summerset and Valenwood, and the harbor which would likely have been the best for us to lay anchor. But it was, lamentably, beyond our reach. Warm winds were gradually pushing us towards Pyandonea, which lay at our lee. We were naturally averse to that course—the Sea Elves are not known for their warmth and hospitality. Indeed, any merish land was ideally to be avoided, save for Valenwood, which was growing ever more distant from us. We might've made it to Summerset, though a shipful of beastfolk captained by, of all things, a Cyrodiil would no doubt have received a less than frosty reception, though perhaps one somewhat more cordial than the murderous welcome that lay in store should we have found ourselves wrecked upon Pyandonea's shore.

(Note: An unintended internal rhyme is always delicious, wouldn't you agree?)

In any case, we beggars could certainly not be choosers.

An effort had been made to fashion makeshift oars, but it had proved fruitless, as had the attempt to craft a new rudder. As soon as we were in sufficient proximity to land, we had decided to send a skiff to scout out the shore and scrounge up any supplies. But progress was painfully slow. Ours was to have been a relatively short jaunt: a month from Leyawiin to Anvil, and a month, wind and weather permitting, back, with a stop for reprovisioning should the need arise. Our route had been little different from that which inveterate merchants and sailors had taken for hundreds of years at the height of the Empire. We weren't prepared for our current straits—but then again, who is ever truly prepared for pirate attacks and strandings at sea?

Forty days. That was our lot. Forty days until all hope, well and truly, could be lost. We had already begun supplementing our stores with fish caught from the deep tropical seas—we were lucky in that a number of the crew had been fishercats either in this life or one of their other eight—but our supply of water was already diminishing rapidly. The heat was overwhelming. You couldn't escape it, no matter where you hid yourself. The sun was was like a bull incensed. Already some of the crew had fainted of heat stroke and were taken belowdecks to convalesce.

But being stranded was perhaps the least of the troubles besetting the _Breath-of-Kyne_.

The conspirators who had brought about our downfall were still in fetters, down in the deep darkness of the brig. After I had sufficiently recovered, Ya'zin took me to see them.

They were nearly unrecognizable. Ya'zin had employed his most imaginative arts to wring the truth out of them, drop by precious drop, and they had suffered dearly for it. The whole chamber had about it the stink of decay and death.

"These will give you nothing more, Captain," Ya'zin purred, his fangs glinting in the lamplight, "They have sung so sweetly."

I trembled. My stomach twisted and undulated like a serpent. I could not look away.

They were traitors. They had sold us out for a few septims. Their actions had caused the death of dozens of the crew, and might've brought about my own. This was the cruelest of necessities, an expression of the innate savagery that sleeps within all hearts. The crew would've been subjected to more, and potentially worse, if the conspirators' plan had actually succeeded, after all.

But how could one look upon this sorry sight and not feel a twinge of pity? Empathy? Revulsion? I thought about what had brought them to this moment, the pain and anger that they must have been immersed in from their earliest moments that had twisted them and sowed the seed of hatred in their hearts.

Or perhaps that was nothing more than wishful thinking on my part, a projection of my own thoughts and attitudes upon those whose life, experience, culture, and most pertinently, biology was entirely separate from my own.

You of all people know that I've always been easily duped. Where others might give an inch, I'll gladly cede a mile. Perhaps that very proclivity explains how I got myself tied up in this whole debacle.

And it was certainly the cause of my next mistake.

Bile rising in my throat, I turned from the wretches and cast a withering look towards Ya'zin, who seemed to be admiring his handiwork like a cobbler might appraise a pair of cordovan boots.

I thought, _If I do this_ , _they might kill me_. But I paid my mind no heed.

"Ya'zin," I began, rallying myself.

"Hmmm?" the cat replied.

"I'd like you to cut them down, tend to their wounds, and give them a bit of food and water."

Ya'zin seemed unperturbed at first. He waved a dismissive paw, and stroked his whiskers as if engaged with his thoughts.

"Ya'zin," I continued, "I'm quite serious about this."

He turned and regarded me perplexedly, like a foreigner wrangling with an unfamiliar word.

"But Captain," he said, "they are _renrij_."

"Yes, well," I muttered, struggling to find the right words, "I know who they are...And you must believe me when I say that I dislike it just as much as you do...But…"

I trailed off and began to rub my temples profusely, as if I were overcome with a headache. Ya'zin said nothing, but continued staring at me fixedly. After a few moments, I collected myself and began fashioning myself a magnificent sepulcher.

"Surely criminals must stand trial for their crimes, wouldn't you agree?" I inquired in an awkward tone of voice, as if this were a playful conversation before a banquet.

"Stand trial?" Ya'zin mumbled tonelessly. Then, a bolt of ribald laughter shot out from his throat, making me jump. "Stand trial?"

Once again, I felt a shiver go up my spine as he flashed that brilliant smile.

"I know how ridiculous that might seem after all that's happened, but I won't have another execution on this ship, I tell you—"

"Dro'Barri stood trial, the Captain knows this."

That startled me, and after a moment's delay I stammered, "N-not by any Tamrielic standard, not even by a naval court martial—"

"The sea has a different law! The Captain knows. Every sailor knows. Even S'rendarr cannot see here."

"They will be kept alive. That is my order as captain of this ship."

" _Ahhh_ , and what does the Captain suggest we do?" Ya'zin hissed, circling about me like a shark inflamed by blood. "Take them before the Mane?"

"Perhaps."

"And how will we get there? Float to Pelletine in a barrel?"

"Ya'zin…"

"And how will we feed them? Will the Captain conjure ducks and gooses from the sky? Or will he offer himself as meat, perhaps?"

"Ya'zin—"

" _Ohh_ yes, this one knows what the Captain wants. He wants them to be an example! To bring the _renrij_ to a court, to have them judged, for everyone to sigh and say, 'Oh, if only Khajiit would love Khajiit, we would have peace!'"

A cruel laugh rang out in the nauseous air of the brig.

"This one has always known the Captain's type. The Captain thinks in a silly way. He is like those who think the sword is not strong, and the pen is! _Ha_! And hate is not strong, but love is! _Ha_! This one knows what the Captain is. Ya'zin-dar has known many little men like him."

"What exactly is your point, Ya'zin?"

"This one's point is _here_ ," Ya'zin hissed, groping the bulge in his breeches before dissolving into a fit of laughter.

"Perhaps you do not understand my meaning. Allow me to clarify. Explain yourself promptly, or else join these wretches here in the brig," I riposted audaciously.

" _Ho ho ho ho_ ," Ya'zin chortled, cowering in mock fear, "Please captain! Please! Don't put me in irons! Please! Please no! This one will be a good slave!"

" _Ya'zin_!" I roared, slamming my fist on a nearby tabletop.

"This one will not let you! No Khajiit on this ship will let you! Stand trial? Stand trial? This is not the clan mother's hut! There are no sweet cakes and sugar rolls here! This is the _sea_!"

"I am the captain of this—"

"And what will it change? There has always been _renrij_ , ever since Nirni was born. If there is a cockroach, this one kills it! This one does not bring it to a judge, and have it stand trial for crawling up this one's nose! It is the same, no?"

"Ya'zin, by Azura, I know how this sounds, but you _must_ understand—"

At that moment, a reedy whimper filtered out from behind the bars of one of the cells. We turned sharply and interrogated the darkness.

It was J'Rasha. The smoky half light revealed the sickening glisten of fresh blood on her flayed lips, gaping gums. She had no eyes.

Then, she screamed.

"Kill J'Rasha! Kill her! Kill her! Kill her! Kill! Kill! Kill! J'Rasha is not afraid! This one wants no mercy! This one is nothing! This one is nothing! Eat me! Eat me! Let them _eaaaaatttttt_ —"

Ya'zin spat a few words in brutal Ta'agra, which abruptly silenced her. He crossed the room to J'Rasha's cell. There he paused a moment, and seemed to collect himself. Slowly, and with finality, he raised a trembling finger to one of the iron bars of the cell and flicked. The sound of ringing iron was enough to evoke a fit of agony in J'Rasha—she collapsed to the boards and writhed, desperately clawing at her ears, which had been reduced to stubs by previous tortures. Ya'zin knelt, and with surprising tenderness began purring to her, cooing to her, shushing her whimpering. Finally, she was quiet.

Ya'zin rose, his fury spent, and returned to my side.

"Gracious gods…" I whispered.

"Don't you see, Captain? They are already dead."

—

It was at night. No stars were out, and Jone and Jode hid their faces beneath wooly banks of cloud, dusky battlements that secreted a storm in their wings. You could smell it in the air, the iron musk of rain. The heat lay upon us as thick fat on milk. The lurid glow of torches and the black sable sky cast a claustrophobic pall over the scene, as if we were deep beneath the earth and not indeed floating on open seas. The assembled crew was silent, as severe as moth priests.

Finally, the prisoners were led out of the brig. To seem them beneath the glare of the torches was to see a vision of a world inverted, unmasked; to see a door open into the secret place that hides at the edge of vision; to see the verge between dreaming and waking; to feel the prick of foreign eyes upon your back, turn, and find that, indeed, someone has been watching you. We apprehend the world, I think, in such a way that after a time we come to expect a certain order, a certain standard of normalcy, a certain measure of reason, of life. All the legends teach us, however, that the Aurbis—indeed, all that _is_ —came about as the result of a clash between the unchangeable and the changeable, stasis and chaos. In the weave of existence, therefore, it should come as no surprise that both be expressed in equal measure. And yet we, being creatures of habit, find it incongruous, and indeed shocking, when the life to which we are accustomed is cloven suddenly before our eyes, when the orders, standards of normalcy, and measures of reason which we have imposed upon reality are broken and ground into dust.

So far I have described to you, my dearest Albinia, horrors: poison, pirates, torture, slavery, betrayal, murder most foul. And indeed, experiencing these events, seeing them as they played out before my eyes, was horrific. Yet I do not believe that I had truly accepted their truth; that is, what they signified to me. I had witnessed them still believing, in some furtive corner of my mind, that life was still obeying the tidy, well-kempt order that Sextus Silanus had inhabited for his forty-odd years; that they were mere aberrations, anomalies that would dissipate like a smudge of dirt on your boot—with a gob of spit and a handkerchief. But life's course cannot be corrected with a mere turn of a wheel. Some trajectories are not so easily altered. And when the prisoners were paraded out onto the decks, for me that truth crystallized. It was as if I had been struck in the heart with a diamond arrow. I realized with the totality of prophecy that this was not some waking nightmare, but life, real life.

And most terrifying of all was that this life was indistinguishable from a nightmare.

Their skin had been flayed, and the raw muscle, blood, gristle, and bone glistened in the sickly light. Some were missing eyes, noses, lips, ears. Some had no arms and others walked on single legs. Forgive me that I do not recall which was which—I have tried dutifully to forget. What fur remained them was matted with blood and excrement. The smell they gave off—wretched. And the sound of one of them weeping with their voice, for they had no tears to cry any longer.

What could I have done, Albinia? What should I have done? I don't know any more. I don't know.

My eyes went out and scanned the faces of the crew. I was perched by the door to my quarters, leaning on a walking stick—I was still weak, you must remember. Suddenly, I found Za'nir in the crowd. Our eyes met, latched onto and fell into one another for what seemed like eternities of time, green eyes melting into honey gold, in and out and out and in.

Then, without further ceremony, the slaughter began.

I don't remember what happened. I remember the beginning, but could not tell you when it ended, or if, or how. I only remember weeping, long and bitterly, and an overwhelming nausea clawing at my bowels. It must've been hours. Then came some moment when it felt as if there was a pause, a shift in gears. I didn't look; I couldn't open my eyes.

And it was in that moment that everything changed.

Something happened. A thunderclap smote the electric air, and the flames whipped in the breeze. There was...I don't know...a light, and a sound, something I can't describe. Like the ticking of a clock, the whirring of some dynamo. Then a deep rumble, as if the earth itself was sighing. And then a withering sound, like the rasping of dry leaves. Someone, I don't know who, called out, "Captain!" In the next moment, the sky opened up, and a tempest was unleashed.

Rain sluiced the decks. The sea roiled. Gale force winds railed into us with the ferocity of a cavalry charge. Lightnings cracked and sizzled. Everyone was in a panic—scrambling for cover, climbing up the masts or the rigging, running around blindly. I merely stared, dumbfounded, my mouth agog. Finally Za'nir found me.

"Down! Down!" he roared, grabbing me by the shoulder and pushing me to the deck just as a wave that must've been the size of White Gold Tower fell down on us.

The ship was broken in two. Something was lifting us up higher and higher into the air. The crew was flying, rolling on the decks, dying, screaming. Suddenly I was suspended on some patch of rigging, my palms slicked with blood from grasping on the rope. Za'nir hung below me, his feet dangling in the open air. He called out to me, but I could not hear him. I was blinded by the flashing. The _Breath-of-Kyne_ groaned in its death throes.

There was the sickening sensation of falling…

Then cold, and the darkness of the sea.

 **AUTHOR'S NOTE**

 _Sorry for the long hiatus! I've been busy finishing up uni and starting my post-grad life, and haven't had as much time/motivation to write. However, with this chapter the story enters into a new phase, and the chronicle of a mysterious island begins. Stay tuned!_

 _-_ yungpapi


	8. A Curious Isle

**VII: In Which Sextus Silanus Arrives Upon a Curious Isle**

* * *

Up to this point the happenings I have related to you, although doubtlessly extraordinary, have, at the least in my humble view, not stretched the bounds of credulity unduly. Or rather not excessively. A conspiracy such as I have described might smack of those gauche adventure novels that one finds penned by upjumped lordlings who have never stepped beyond the arena of their cloistered experience—the sumptuous banquets, the balls and galas, the well upholstered cushions, the fine wines and candied fruits— and indeed, living through it seemed more a dream gone wrong, a carnival whose ridiculosity was such that in some queer way it metamorphosed into monstrosity. I had been possessed by hazard; had donned, for a moment, the harlequin's façade at the masquerade. But I had proven a rather poor actor (or exceedingly convincing, depending on one's perspective), and the charade wouldn't stop going. Reality had consequently discarded all tact and inhibition for sensuality and amusement. I, of course, was the object of its increasingly inexorable games. It was like the late hours of a party when the guests have drunk too much, and all the specters of the heart waiting to be exorcised—unrequited loves, ill-resolved feuds, well-watered enmities—are called to séance.

I speak in trivial terms, if only not to overwhelm you with the macabre. But I must confess, my dearest Albinia, that this graceless adventure novel will now assume the aspect of a ghost story. There is more horror, more death, more debauchery, and more evil to follow, and all of it real. I know that it was real and not a nightmare, not a fantasy, not a masquerade, not an illusion. I know it because I wear its scars on my flesh and on my heart. I am branded, ensorceled, ensnared in the noose of this great sorrow, this dream-that-was-not-a-dream, this vast and undulating shadow.

You will say that I am mad, and that nothing of what I have said was true. And perhaps you will have the right of it, in the end. But the truth will not and cannot be destroyed. I have the evidence to prove it.

Strain your credulity. Listen. And please—

 _Believe_.

—

I awoke on a beach. Immediately upon coming to I was overwhelmed by the shrieking of tropical birds and the heavy weight of the sun on my shoulders. Somehow a spot of sand had weaseled its way into my mouth, and so I gathered what meager saliva was left in my mouth and spat it out. That done, I pushed myself up onto my elbows and finally rose to my knees. Looking myself over, I found that I was remarkably unscathed—no scars, no broken bones, no aches or pains, not even the merest splinter. The shipwreck was covered over with a haze in my mind, had about it the sense of unreality of all incredible events. And yet it _had_ happened—my clothes were stiff, as they tend to be after being soaked in salt water and dried; and of course, the fact of the matter was that I was derelicted here upon a foreign beach. Barring the possibility of having been in a skooma stupor for the past week or so, it was beyond any reasonable doubt that the shipwreck had indeed occurred. Some weeks, they say, can be as momentous as whole years; and it seems that this week, for poor, woebegone Sextus Silanus, was one of them.

I appraised my surroundings. In truth it was rather an idyllic place—a beach of sand as white as polished ivory; calm turquoise water lapping up against it; a sky bereft of clouds, blue as lapis; a warm breeze redolent with the tang of the sea; and a dense jungle terminating right at the sand's margin, thick with lianas strung with orchids and palms pregnant with coconuts. It was a place more fit for leisure than anything else, and compared to what had come before it seemed so curious, so tranquil, so cool and calm. There was no sign of the _Breath_ - _of_ - _Kyne_ , no detritus or debris nor even a singular barrel of apples. And of course, no sign of the crew. I imagined that I was in some kind of dream realm, the last post station before the arrival of death, in which one's fantasies are acted out with extraordinary clarity and the whole menagerie of one's life is paraded before one's eyes; I have heard of such things from those who have come to the verge of death.

But I was not convinced. Many of the islands of Pyandonea are similar, or so I had heard. The winds had after all been teasing in that direction; but it seemed unlikely that we had been blown so far, judging from Za'nir's last sight at least. Of course one hears of such freakish storms, putting ships hundreds of leagues off course within a single night. The storm that we had experienced, however...That was cut of a different cloth than the average freak tempest. The things that I had heard. The things that I had seen. The things that I had _felt_. That was something that was divorced entirely from the realm of the meteorological. And whatever island I had washed up on, I hypothesized, it was likely not one that you could find on a map.

I pushed the nature of the storm aside for the moment and focused my attentions on more pressing matters, however—finding my crew and any remnants of the _Breath_ - _of_ - _Kyne_. That took precedence. Afterwards we could puzzle about how we had gotten here. That is if there was any _we_ to speak of.

I pushed myself to my feet, brushed myself off, and set off down the beach to see what I could find. Perhaps in the bedlam of the storm and the frothing of the waves we had been stranded upon separate shores of the island; the _Breath_ - _of_ - _Kyne_ had been split in two after all, if I remembered properly. And so I sped off, in what direction I did not know, towards where the coast veered off. It was obvious to me then that wherever I was, it was a small island, perhaps only a few miles in area at most. I conjectured that within a day or two at most I'd be able to comb the whole place, though that was admittedly a premature evaluation. Of course, despite my years on the high seas, I'd never been shipwrecked (thank the Eight); and so the exploration of desert islands was rather an unfamiliar subject to me, though I should imagine that it is for most everyone. I'd read of such things in chronicles or novels, but I did not truly comprehend the situation that I was in.

But I felt strangely invigorated. A seed of purpose was blooming within me. I now felt, as I had not felt in a long time, that there was something that I must do: find my crew. That they had, before my very eyes, committed acts cruel and heinous was of no consequence. They were my crew— _my_ crew. And whatever they had done, was I not complicit in it too? Was I not guilty of the same crimes? For having allowed it to happen? For having _watched_? Wherever they were, I would find them. I would find them and remind them that even stranded and shipwrecked, they were my crew and I was their captain. That if only they would believe in me, I would steer them out. I would save them. And if I could not, then I would not save myself. If we must die on this island, then I would die with them. I would not merely watch them in their suffering—I would bear the burden of it with them. For the first time in my whole life, I felt like the captain of a ship, standing at the helm with the sails full with wind, guiding and directing, but one mere part of a whole organ put to a singular purpose. On the ship I had been helpless; but now? Everything, for some reason, seemed to have changed as if in an instant—a sea change, one could say. And they would see it, the crew would see it, and they would know.

If only I could find them.

But as the day wore on, I was increasingly disappointed, and by the end of it, increasingly desperate. Not only was there no sign of the crew, or of the remains of the ship, but no landmark or feature that demarcated the landscape. I knew, after a time, that I must have already circumnavigated the coast; and yet I could not have known it, for the beach's appearance had never once _changed_ during the duration of my exploration—not the trees, not the orchids, not even a single stone was different. My footprints, too seemed to have been eroded by the surf, despite my having walked well away from the water. Soon I knew why. Once, I looked behind me and saw that my footprints, even up to the previous, had disappeared without a trace.

Thinking it to have been some fluke, I went and gathered some twigs and small stones and built a little tumulus near the tree line, far away from the water. I decided to press on for a span, and then return to see if the tumulus remained. And of course, just as I had surmised, when I went back the little construct was nowhere to be found. Greatly shaken by this, I sat in the sand and collected my thoughts. Briefly I entertained the idea that the wind had blown the thing away, but I knew very well enough how unlikely that was. When there's smoke, they say, there's fire; and it seemed to me that the only explanation for the instantaneous disappearance of my footprints and the uniformity of the environment was some kind of magic. What, how, and why was anyone's guess; but what else should I have thought?

The shadows were beginning to grow long, and the light gradually assuming the gilded quality of afternoon. I cast a look backwards towards the yawning maw of the jungle and knew that I would have to investigate the island's interior if I was to progress, however much foreboding I felt about it. The sudden growling of my stomach, however, put me to the purpose. Being a crotchety, middle-aged man, as you well know, I'm not accustomed to missing meals. And so I approached one of the rather voluptuous coconut palms and, not really knowing what to do, gave it a good shake. The coconuts, however, wouldn't budge. Not one to be deterred, I began to shake more violently, thrashing the thing like a murderous stepmother. Finally, three or four of the things flew off and began to propel themselves towards the ground with great force, making me flee for safety.

I approached the fat green nuts with trepidation and picked the largest of them for eating. Of course I had never eaten a coconut, and wasn't quite sure how to crack one open. Then I remembered having seen someone breaking one open with a machete. Naturally I didn't have one on hand, but searching near the verge of the jungle, I found a sharp-edged stone that I thought might be up to the task.

 _Hack_. _Hack_. _Hack_. The stone, as I found out, wasn't nearly as sharp as I had thought; but after the span of some minutes I finally managed to break the thing open…Only for some liquid to splash all over me—the so-called "coconut water". I groaned in dismay, and desperately scrubbed my now sticky fingers in the sand to clean them. But, I thought, at least the island had a source of liquid sustenance if I wasn't able to find water.

Although the coconut water had spilled everywhere, the inviting white flesh within still awaited me. I took one half of the coconut, got my cutting stone, and was about to slice off a nice, juicy piece, when suddenly I saw that there was a face inside staring at me.

Dark, beady eyes, like chips of coal, lidless. A lipless mouth filled with clean, white teeth. No nose. It was there in an instant, how I don't know. I had looked away from the briefest of moments, and in the next it was there, formed out of the white flesh of the fruit. Looking at me. Staring at me. Holding me in its eyes. Smiling ceaselessly.

I was transfixed. I could not move. It was as if I was held down with the weight of a boulder. Chained by the throat.

Suddenly everything in all the world pivoted around that face. Everything was reflected in those eyes. Simian eyes. Its porcelain white teeth, so fine, so straight and well groomed. The creamy flesh, glistening slightly in the afternoon light. The eyes.

A voice whispered, as if inside of my skull.

"Hello."

And then it was night. It was unlit by the moons or stars. Impossibly dark. The jungle was gone. The entire island was nothing more than a pile of sand in the middle of the ocean. It couldn't have been more than some yards in area. But there was a light—a single golden light that shone from a hole in the mound of sand before me, pulsing gently. What was it? What could it be? Suddenly a terrifying curiosity took hold of me, and coming to the edge of the hole, I knelt down and crawled into light.


	9. A Strange Personage

**Part VIII: In Which Sextus Silanus Meets With A Strange Personage**

* * *

I emerged and was soon struck low with amazement. I had come into a chamber of some kind, though more akin to a temple. It was the very image of grandeur and opulence. The walls were painted a deep, rich red, and adorned with moulding of red gold, gleaming dully in the light. Massive and fabulously worked bronze chandeliers were suspended from thick chains reaching down from the darkness of the alcoves, and hulking candelabra (there must have been dozens of arms on each) studded with fat red candles were spaced intermittently throughout. The ceiling was impossibly high—I had just come from the surface, and by the looks of it the ceiling rose far, far above the level of the ground. It must've been at least seventy feet from the white marble of the chamber floor, if not more, though its true altitude was impossible to gauge, shrouded in shadows as it was. Great, stout pillars, as wide around as oak trees, themselves fashioned of richly veined black marble, held the whole thing aloft. I was above it all, perched upon a rock ledge; the chamber walls ran abruptly into a wall of rock, and it was through a hole in this wall which I had crawled. A series of rock-hewn stairs led down to the marble floor thirty or so feet below.

For a moment I simply sat there, taking in the incredible sight. But curiosity overtook me, and by degrees I made my way down the stair and into a forest of pillars. I felt again as I had before: propelled by both a morbid inquisitiveness and a hidden power, something beckoning me, pushing and pulling, drawing me to this place as a moth to flame. Both my body and mind succumbed to that force; and thus without much caution or forethought I began to explore the chamber. I was powerless, out of thought and out of mind; and now I know of course that I was not myself. I was, in a word, bewitched, ensorcelled. By what or by whom I did not yet know.

Lurid scarlet, the bellowing and cavernous silence, the glimmer of candlelight on gold, the sweat beading on my brow, the sensation of my own breathing, all these passed through me as if through a sieve. It was as if I had been submerged in bathwater or smothered by a blanket—everything was smeared, muffled, covered over with a film like warm cream. Sextus Silanus was somewhere else, in the outside, looking down at this vessel, this assemblage of flesh and bone, not an actor but a mere witness. The sound of my footsteps came to me as if howled from the top of a mountain, my breathing as if by way of avalanche. And in those yawning hollows between there were other things too that I heard, faint though they were—tinny tinklings, the soft whirrings of bells, clipped inhalations, distant music, footsteps scurrying away into the darkness beyond the candle's light. And intermittently beyond the edge of vision, shrouded in mutable shadows, unknown shapes stirred, writhing like a mass of flailing limbs. And all the while I could only move, one step at a time, towards what destination I did not know, unable to run, unable to cower and hide my eyes, unable to scream.

Finally I came to a door of hammered bronze. Its immensity was such that it reached up into the gloom of the vault above without end. And on its dull surface were worked immeasurable vignettes of obscenity: scenes of sex and debauchery in every imaginable variety—women, men, mer, beasts, children, all stained and branded and defiled forever; episodes of murder, rape, plunder, bedlam—decapitations, impalations, immolations, gluttonous _auto-da-fes_ , tortures more vile and wretched than ever imagined; and at the level of my eyes: cannibal repasts and bacchanalias, orgies of beasts gorging themselves on infants stuffed and roasted, greasy eyes peering out from soup cauldrons, gorgon-headed men devouring their wives as they writhed and choked and screamed...And at the center of it all, throned and haloed as an emperor, scepter commanding, his hands raised aloft in the symbol of power, wreathed in fire: a grand wizard, a magus, his eyes like rubies, and a faint smile playing on his face, boasting of his imperium.

I knew then that I was mad.

With a great abyssal booming, as if the very mechanics of the world were in motion, the door's locking mechanism shifted, and with a sepulchral moan it began to open. I gazed with glazed eyes as the vast sheets of bronze unfurled themselves and revealed...what could it have been? It seemed as if a hole had been bored in the fabric of the Mundus itself. It was a blackness through which no light could penetrate, a blackness that was itself like a could of light, for it radiated out, shone bleakly like some dark inverted sun.

I could only witness, writhing helplessly within, as a pale hand emerged, and with a single flick of its finger seized me with a phantom power and plunged me into darkness.

—

"Wake up."

Light. Blinding. I couldn't open my eyes.

"Wake up."

The voice was flippant, playful.

"Wake up, _Captain_ …"

The voice cooed coquettishly, like a lover craving another round. I felt a cool hand on my face, long, sharp nails. I tried to murmur something in response, but it all came out garbled.

"Captain, _please_ , you simply _must_ wake up…"

I recognized it as a man's voice now, though it was high and raspy, as if he was out of breath. The hand continued to stroke my face, fingering my whiskers.

"Can't…" I managed to choke out.

"What was that, _Captain_?" the voice purred.

"Can't...too...br...br…"

Drool spooled from my lips.

"Oh, Captain…" the voice harrumphed, "Look at you...Sweet, poor Captain…"

The hand began caressing my ear lobes.

"Wh...whe...whe...I—"

Then, with a susurrus of silk, the hand slapped me hard across the cheek. Long nails dug into my flesh, and suddenly warm rivulets of blood streamed down my face.

The pain was immense. Some flesh had certainly come off with the blow. I cried out, choked on bile, and my eyes finally opened, whirling about in their orbits.

"You will speak human language, _slave_ , or not at all!"

Suddenly the voice had assumed a deeper, imperious tone, completely unlike that of before, as if possessed.

But only a moment later the voice softened again and let out a distressed cry. The hand returned, and I felt the coolness of silk on my cheek as it daubed the wound.

"Oh, Captain, please, you must forgive me...How awful of me to treat a guest that way...Look at this, look at this! Oh, you're bleeding! Not right...Not right...You simply must forgive me...Do you forgive me, Captain? Oh please tell me that you forgive me, oh please, oh _please_. I swear I shall make it up to you, I daren't not. Not after doing such a horrible thing, horrible thing, horrible thing. Oh, Captain..."

Finally my eyes began to adjust to the brightness. Color flooded my senses, then the smell of the sea, and finally…

 _Sunlight_.

It was a patio of sorts, a kind of broad balcony. Far below us, lapping gently against a beach of glistening white sand, were shallow turquoise waters chased with ultramarine beyond the break. Warm sunlight glimmered on the waves, flared jewellike. A pearled sky hung above, ornamented with vast galleries of clouds. The sandstone balustrade was overgrown with banks of flowers—jasmine and bougainvillea—and on the far end was mounted a polished brass spyglass. The air was warm, drowsy with the hum of bees. Intermittently cool sea breezes, musky with salt, unfurled and brushed the rouged tips of the blooms.

Before me was a round, stout teak table set with a fabulous luncheon: bottles of fine Skingrad wines, Colovian ale and brandy, and Nordic mead; fat rounds of smoky Bruma cheese; hunks of freshly baked bread drizzled with wildflower honey or smeared with apricot preserves and butter; glazed hams and sausages braised in beer; cold capon and pickled onions; rashers of bacon; fried duck eggs for topping; salads of every variety; roasted pears; peaches positively bursting out of their skins with juice; apples and figs and plums, all cold and ripe beyond belief; sweetcakes and rolls, candies and spoonsweets; kettles for brewing herbals teas and infusions; a panoply of liqueurs and sweet dessert wines; and of course, who could forget the crown roast of lamb rubbed with exotic Hammerfell spices holding court at the center of it all? The food service took up the entire space of the table—the plates, cups, and cutlery hardly had any room to breathe—and was piled high as a castle parapet. It was utterly incredible to behold, and the aroma of the repast, coupled with the perfume of the flowers and the scent of the sea, intoxicating.

Or it would have been, I suppose, in any other circumstances. As it was however, it elicited only bewilderment. But what was more bewildering—and frightening—was the face before me, whose mouth at that moment curled into a dulcet smile of elation.

"My, my, Captain, finally, you're awake!"

A laugh rang out, high and clear like a bell, and my nostrils were overwhelmed by the acrid stench of garlic and rotting teeth.

A pair of cool, evergreen eyes gazed down into mine, presiding like twin moons over a slight aquiline nose. Likely Breton. Thin lips, cracked somewhat, but vividly pink, as if made up. High cheekbones framing plump, freckled cheeks. Sharp, dimpled chin. A broad, unlined forehead. Shock of golden hair, perfectly straight, coiling down to the shoulders. And a lanky frame—tall and bony, swaddled in an ill-fitted red velvet doublet.

The man looked as if he could not have been more than a whelp of fifteen; yet from the moment I laid eyes upon him, that face of cherubic beauty filled me with a terror. Unnatural, aberrant, perverted, false—a face that was acted, performed, a mask, the face of a battered doll. Sickly perfection. The sensation was akin to the pang of fear I felt when Ya'zin flashed his wicked smiles, but infinitely more revolting. About him was an aura of corruption that you could almost _see_ with the naked eye, and certainly could feel, as if you had been smeared with grease.

"Oh, Captain, you won't _believe_ what fun we're going to have, you and I !" He began giggling impishly, unperturbed by my gags (his breath was positively fetid).

Then, as if remembering something that'd slipped his mind, he crossed to the other end of the table and poured out a glass of water. Hastily he crossed back to my side and perched himself upon the arm of my chair.

"You must be so thirsty," he purred, pushing the gold-rimmed crystal into my hands, "Please, Captain, drink. I couldn't conscience entertaining a thirsty guest. By Azura! Can you imagine? Keeping your guests thirsty at a party? Greedily hoarding the good wine in the cellar? Is there anything more rude in all the world? I couldn't imagine it. There's nothing worse in life than a bad host. Nothing worse, nothing worse. But no, no, not I, my dear Captain, not I. No, I'm one of the good hosts—I think that I can boast of that—and what does a good host know? A good host knows to keep his guests well lubricated. _Please_ , Captain, _do_ drink, I insist."

But I could do no more than stare at him. At times there's only so much absurdity one can stomach—and this was one of those times. The glass went limp in my grasp and fell to the flagstones with a crash, the water splattering all over the blonde man.

But he didn't even bat an eye.

Instead he merely clucked, and regarding me with a knowing, conspiratorial look.

"Ah, ah, ah, I see, _I_ see. Naughty, naughty Captain—you should've just said so if you wanted some wine! _Haha_ , _haha_! Oh yes, oh yes, I saw you eyeing that Brothers Valdort 778! A fine year that was—you're a man of discerning taste, Captain! Well, well, say no more: I'll pour us a glass and we can start things off properly. After all, why have water when there's wine? That's what I always say!"

Then with a riot of laughter, he uncorked the dusty bottle of Brothers Valdort—I must note that he was indeed telling the truth, and that 778 was in fact an excellent year—but then, just as he was going to pour the first glass, he jolted and shrieked suddenly. A reedy croak emerged from his throat, and his hands had begun to tremble. Tears welled in his eyes. Then with a force that nearly shattered the bottle, he slammed the Brothers Valdort onto the tabletop and gagged. Craning his neck towards me, I saw that his face was twisted into an aspect of supreme terror.

"C-c-c-captain," he hissed, "I-I-I-I-I-I... _I_ - _I_ - _I_ - _I_ - _I_...I h-had f-f-f-forgotten...Th-th-this wine...m-m-must be...DECANTED! DECANTED! DECANTED!"

He began to snarl, and tore at his hair, screaming again and again, "DECANTED! DECANTED!"

Finally he collapsed to the floor, and sat there for what must have been a few minutes, dissolving into tears and moans. I said nothing; I was simply too shocked to process anything of what was going on. Then, his eyes puffy and nostrils engorged with snot, he looked up at me.

"Captain," he began in a desolate voice, "am I...a bad host?"

I simply balked, utterly speechless, and stared at the floor. A long silence passed, punctuated with more stifled sobs, which was succeeded by another, longer silence.

I was startled suddenly by a low, muffled voice.

"Oh...oh...No...I'm being ridiculous, aren't I? Once I was at a party and the host didn't serve any wine with dessert...I remember wanting to kill him and eat him for his impudence, and yet...The guests thought the pudding was superb, and they were satisfied without, and they forgave him his sin…"

He rose sniffling to his feet, wiping away tears, and then flashed me a rotten grin.

"Captain, I've decided. I'll decant the Brothers Valdort, and while we wait we'll have a younger red. Besides—oh, fool that I am, why didn't I think of this before?—it shall be better at dinner. I do hope you can wait that long, my dear Captain. I assure you that it shall be worth the delay."

Then with a giggle he hopped to the other end of the table, uncorked another bottle, this one unlabeled, and poured out two glasses full. Once again he forced the glass into my hands, and without a moment of delay he raised his own and pronounced in a haughty tone, "A toast, a toast! To my dear, sweet guest, Captain Sextus Silanus—may he never be shipwrecked... _again_!" Then he laughed heartily, and in a single swig downed his glass and began grotesquely smacking and licking his lips.

Again I stared, but by this time I had rallied somewhat. As the man went and poured himself another glass of wine, I gathered the little saliva I had in my mouth, and, barely able to utter a sound, I choked—

"Who are you?"

He had perched himself on the table's edge, swirling around his wine in its glass. He grinned, downed his wine, and, still smacking, replied, "I was wondering when you'd ask."

He stood abruptly, and as if assuming the posture of a dancer, he gestured and bowed deeply.

"You may call me Hastrel. Once I had a family name, too, but that was long ago."

Hastrel—a Breton name. My suspicions were confirmed.

"What is this place?" I groaned, my throat still dry as papyrus.

In response, Hastrel clicked his tongue, crossed the patio to the balustrade and regarded the sea with a self-satisfied expression.

"This," he said, gesticulating towards the horizon, "is my domain. Everything that your eyes behold, my dear Captain, belongs to me. My little kingdom."

It was then that he noticed something below him, and let out a gasp of delight.

"Oh, my! Captain! Our other guests have arrived!"

My stomach immediately tightened. I guessed who it might be. And I could only imagine what this terrifying, unpredictable, disgusting creature could have done with them.

 _The crew_.

"Come, come Captain! Here, here! Come take a look!"

He ran to the brass spyglass at the far end of the balustrade and began scrying where he had looked before; but shook his head. But after making a few adjustments to the instruments, and finally let out a pleasant sigh.

"Oh, yes, splendid, splendid. Captain, you simply _must_ come have a look."

I was rooted to my seat out of fear, but I knew that I had to look, had to see. Leaving my wine glass on the table I rose, trembling, and made my way to the spyglass. Seagulls cried in the summer sky, and a gentle breeze reared up and tousled the banks of flowers. It was the most glorious and pleasant of days imaginable, but I could have retched as I came to the spyglass and perceived the foul odor of Hastrel's breath. Poison in paradise. He gestured for me to look, and I shuddered as he threw an arm around my shoulder and his lips drew close to my ear.

"Look... _there_ ," he whispered hoarsely.

With trepidation I placed my eye upon the lens, and started—for I was witness to a scene of bedlam.

A broad, rocky, rainswept beach. Flashes of lightning. Bits of flotsam—barrels, shattered bits of wood, lengths of rope, scraps of cloth—floated atop the frothing waves and threw themselves onto the shore. And amongst that flotsam: dark bodies. Some clung for dear life onto whatever they could; others grasped desperately at the empty air, struggling to stay afloat; others bobbed lifelessly in the black water or were derelicted on the shore. And rearing up above it all, silhouetted intermittently by the lightning, the broken crag of the _Breath-of-Kyne_ , wrecked upon a reef beyond the break.

I tore myself away from darkness to the blazing light of afternoon.

"What have you done to them?" I spat, my voice nearly spent.

In response, Hastrel turned, crossed to the table, and sat again on the table's edge, crossing his legs.

"My, my, Captain, I didn't want to begin the festivities so soon. We haven't even eaten!" he began, pouting, "But I suppose it can't be helped."

A wry grin wrinkled his cheeks.

"We're all going to play a little game."

"A game!?" I cried.

"Yes, a game! It's not a party without a game, wouldn't you agree? And I do so love games."

I felt myself falling down, down, down, deep into those flaming emerald eyes, felt myself bewitched by the deathly gaze of the harlequin. I knew then that I was ensnared, trapped in his domain, and had come totally, utterly into his power.

"Sit, Captain. Before we begin, I'd like to tell you a story."


	10. The Sorcerer's Tale, Part I

**Part IX: The Sorcerer's Tale, Part I**

* * *

I tried to protest—the notion of listening to this fiend for any length of time, much less hearing him relate a story, was both ridiculous and terrifying—but to no avail. Once again I was impelled by forces unseen, and threw myself rather severely into a nearby chair. Attempting to move or even to speak was impossible.

Hastrel then seated himself at the head of the table. He lowered his head, closed his eyes and steepled his hands as if deep in thought. When he looked up again he had assumed an entirely new aspect. His face changed before my eyes: his cheeks became gaunt, his forehead more deeply lined, his skin yellowed and dry, his lips cracked and chapped, his nose more craglike and disjointed. His previously shimmering hair now seemed drab, and a light, downy beard sprouted like weeds after a rainstorm on his chin. His eyes, however, changed the most. Where before his sickly green eyes, however snakelike, had flared with a cruel light, now they had donned the livery of the sepulcher—dull, filmed, cloudy with discharges and cataracts, like fetid swamp pools covered over with grime.

He appeared like a man near death, if not already a corpse. When he turned to me—for I could still tell that he held me in his eyes despite their listlessness—the aura of obscenity and abomination that hung over him like some dark eidolon was unbearable. I gagged, nearly vomiting in my mouth, and a feeling of overpowering dread dropped like a lodestone in my stomach. Cold sweat beaded on my brow and nipped at the nape of my neck. My heart was pierced as with a rod of ice. And the sorcerer's eyes, like the gaze of a basilisk, bored into my mind.

His voice however, unlike the body that produced it, was iron, immoveable, imperial, the same haughty tone he had assumed before.

"There is one immutable principle that rules all creation," he declared, pausing so that the grandeur of the statement was impressed upon me, "And that is hierarchy.

"Hierarchy, Sextus, that is the rub. _Hierarchy_. You know, I am sure, that ours is a striated universe, a universe of gradients, of substructures within the superstructure that is the Aurbis. Each of these steps upon the ladder lead to the higher truth; but there is _something_ that is higher, a crown upon the pillar, a keystone in the arc of reality, unknowable as it may be. It existed before the first divisions of the cosmos, and it remains still, the great Wheel that girdles creation; and if the hub and the spokes fell away, the Wheel would abide. Do you understand? A ruling king is always a king, not by dint of his kingdom but by his bearing, his character, his aspect. Kingship has suffused him, the role has seized him. The true hierarch is ever the hierarch, and he will do what he must to retain his seat, and it shall seem as nothing to him, shall flow over him like cool spring water.

"The same is true for those who are subordinate to the hierarch. A slave is always a slave, _until he is not_. That is the unique quality of the slave: the capacity for changing his lot. A hierarch, once he has effected his ascension, cannot be unseated, even if reduced to a state of despondency. There are Kings that are slaves, and Slaves that are kings. The difference lies in circumstance. A King is not made by his crown, nor a Slave his fetters.

"Allow me to elaborate…"

—

I was born, as you have no doubt surmised, a Breton male, the son of a family of Northpoint merchants. In the beginning we were not a prosperous lot. Three hundred odd years ago we had been lords in Northpoint, the enterprising House of Montclair; but no longer. As families are wont to do, ours fell on hard times: a wine-sodden great-grandfather gambled away the storied Montclair silver mines; a promising heir was slain in some war or other; a freak accident set one of our warehouses aflame...These, along with other myriad incidents, had marinated the once great Montclair name in mediocrity. Not the least of our grand woes was the death of my father, the heir to the Montclair line, and mother. They had been in Daggerfall investigating a promising business prospect, one that might have reinvigorated our moribund house; but on the return voyage their ship foundered in a storm upon the crags of western Glenumbra, and they were lost to the waves. My brother, scarcely an infant, and I were then entrusted to the sole care of our grandparents.

But they simply had not the means to support us alone. Thus, when I was five years old, my grandfather announced that the imperious villa that had housed generations of Montclairs was to be auctioned off, for with our debts only the intervention of the Eight could have allowed us to remain there (at least, if we did not wish to live as paupers, supping on gruel and tears). One could almost hear the whole city gasp; but there was a resignation there too, an understanding that, finally, after two centuries of senescence, the old lion of Montclair had breathed its last. A whole throng of onlookers attended the auction, curious to see what it was like when an old oak tree is felled, and perhaps to collect some of its timbers for themselves. The silver, the porcelain, the ancient Akaviri tea sets, the brocaded silks, the fine damasks, the gold-chased arrases and dossers, the mile-long Rihadi carpets, the old oil landscapes, the Colovian wines, the sherries and brandies that had been luxuriating in the dark for centuries, the yellowed charts and sea maps, the brass spyglasses and astrolabes: all the accumulated silt of our history was dredged from the murk of the house, some having been so ensconced that they refused to be relinquished, as if the very walls would not cede their last scraps of territory, would not suffer the final humiliation of exposing to the eyes of the world the bare moldering beams that lay beneath their carapaces of dust and drapery.

I remember standing at my grandfather's side as he inaugurated the auction with a speech and a toast, looking out into the crowd of spectators, that gleeful horde of witnesses to our disgrace. Their eyes were dark, simian, gleaming dully like the glass oculi of dolls, their lips pink, plump, ripe, as if aroused. They whispered conspiratorially amongst themselves, and from time to time a ribald guffaw was flung anonymously with all the ferocity of a barbed arrow at my grandfather in his bulging maroon coat. And yet he stood there, my grandmother at his side, with his proud silver beard and his evergreen eyes, and laughed as he bartered away the Montclair fortune, smiled as he sold the home in which he and all his ancestors had been reared. How could he smile, I wondered? How could he laugh? Did he not hear the whispers and the jeers? Did he not feel the phantom gaze of the mob?

In the end the Villa Montclair was sold to an enterprising young buck by the name of Tycho Bracques, who made his fortune whaling off Solstheim, and for the moment we few remaining Montclairs relocated to a luxurious townhouse above Northpoint's square. Our neighbors were fabulously wealthy dilettantes wont to while away evenings ravenous with drink and song. My grandparents, not accustomed to such saturnalia, or at least alien to it for well over three decades, consequently filed a complaint to the landlord. He laughed in their faces.

It was fast becoming clear that our days in Northpoint were numbered. And yet still our grandparents smiled through the long nights punctuated with the pounding music of pipe and drum, broken wine bottles, and besotted singing. Still they smiled during the humiliation of going to market, returning home bristling with jeers and overlong looks like marksmen's dummies. Still they smiled as my grandmother taught herself how to cook and clean and keep house, tasks which she had never once in her life performed herself.

I think of all the people in my life I have met, they were the best. If things had gone differently, I wonder, might I have been like them? Strong, proud, unflinching, unyielding, dignified, kind, graceful, quick to laughter and quick to forgiveness? When I rifle the pages of my life, there are times that I wish that the story had ended here, wish that I could remain submerged in the golden age of my childhood, in those warm, velveteen apartments that seemed to me then to be endless in their mysteries and enticements. In the mornings before our lessons—for my grandfather too had assumed the role of schoolmaster—my brother and I played at knights, duelling atop the gilt sofas and loveseats, dashing after one other through the dark storage rooms and the unfurnished chambers which we, in our poverty, could not afford to populate. If we grew too rowdy, our grandmother would scold us, though not too harshly, promising freshly baked sweetrolls as a reward for good behavior—though we and our grandfather knew well that they were bought from the bakery on the other side of the square, and were not her own as she claimed. We would then occupy the rest of the day at our grandfather's side, rapt as he delivered long sermons on history, his favorite subject, which more often than not were interrupted by grandmother's call to dinner. And no matter how poor the pigeon pie was, no matter how overcooked the roast or how sickly sweet the poached pears, the look of pride on grandmother's face as she gazed upon her day's toil unfailingly elicited from us the same response:

"It's the most delicious thing I've ever tasted."

—

I did not remain there long. Soon my days would no longer be halcyon. The demarcation between that life, that life of wild days and gilded evenings, and the life that came after, lies at my leavetaking from Northpoint. One morning, at breakfast, my grandfather told me that there was a certain cousin in Wayrest who had offered to take me in. He was a professor, and grandfather swore that he would prove a far abler teacher than he could ever be. He was concerned greatly about my education.

"Educated men will be the last salvation of the Montclairs," he said, "And all true education begins with the young."

What I did not realize, naive as I was, was that I was being sent away. I had no real idea of what "being taken in" connoted. I imagined that all of us would go to Wayrest as a family. Naturally I was sorely mistaken.

And so the promised day arrived. My trunks were packed, and I was washed and dressed in my finest doublet. At midday the sound of hooves on cobbles announced the approach of a carriage, and all of us went down to meet it. It was cold and blustery, one of those late autumn days in which one can detect the iron presentiment of winter in the air. The sun was mercury, filtered through plumes of smoky cloud, lending the sky a kind of electricity. I did not think it peculiar that no one else had brought their trunks with them, imagining that they had already sent them ahead. But when I was the only one to approach the sideboard, I turned and saw that my grandparents had tears in their eyes. My brother stared without expression. "Are you not coming with me?" I asked, and they shook their heads. Tears began streaming down my cheeks. I started to go to them, but they said no, and waved me back. _Why?_ I thought. _Why_? _Why_? _Why_? The coachman, pressed for time, came down from the box and gently, but sternly, pushed me into the carriage and closed the door behind me. I felt the phantom tug of motion, and watched helplessly as the sobbing figures of my grandparents and brother grew more and more distant, until they fell away behind jostling crowds, behind stout stone buildings, behind leagues of windswept moors and westering sky, until they were as far from me as the moons.

I never saw them again.

—

I was awakened by the clatter of wheels on cobbles. Cautiously, I parted the curtain and was nearly blinded by the intensity of the morning. It had snowed in the night, and a blanket of sparkling white spread as far as the eye could see. The Bjoulsae ran alongside the road, rushing swift and black towards Iliac Bay in the grey distance, the same course on whose currents I flowed now towards an obscure and unknowable destiny.

We had arrived at Wayrest.

The journey had been hard. I had been tormented by fitful dreams, and sleep had eluded me. But I could not but be curious about this vast and strange place that I had been brought to. We came into the city just as the hawkers began their morning rounds, and as we wended our way through the narrow streets a number of them jockeyed for the coachman's attention, profferring ruby red candied apples and toy soldiers and steaming mugs of hot mulled wine. But he paid them no heed. The morning market had begun in earnest in the city square, and already the stalls were enveloped by servants and housewives going about their shopping. One could smell the pleasing scents of woodsmoke and baking bread, and, less tangible but certainly evident, the tang of salt and rotting fish off the bay in concert with the cries of seagulls and cormorants. Atop the snow-clad chimneys and in the temple belfries, great white storks nested in their roosts of twigs. Faint silvery flakes, listlessly floating in the gustless air, glistened as they were lavished with golden light. I remember that scene as vividly as if it had been yesterday, that memory of smoke and cold and the scintillation of the snow, the bright vestments of the hawkers' stalls and the facades of the market square, the tolling of the bells. Never before and never after was there an autumn morning so beautiful in Wayrest.

By degrees we ascended into a tangled labyrinth of alleys and laneways, where the sharp odor of nightsoil became the dominant note. Finally the streets became too narrow for the passage of the carriage, and the rest would have to be traversed on foot. Luckily the coachman was not so cruel as to allow a young boy of six in a strange place to find the way on his own—or perhaps he had been paid handsomely enough. In any case, we walked together, lashed by the bitter autumn wind, through the dark, quiet streets, where the sunlight did not penetrate. The coachman occasionally muttered to himself, and occasionally we were forced by a dead end to turn around and venture another route, but at last, with a sigh of satisfaction, he placed a hand on my shoulder and pointed straight ahead.

"There," he said roughly, "The blue door."

In that abyss of brown and grey, a single brightly painted, light blue door radiated as brilliantly as a star. The coachman brought me before it, set down my trunk, and eyed me curiously. He mumbled and gurgled for a moment, then knelt down in front of me. He fumbled in the pockets of his cloak, grunting intermittently, and finally produced a small object wrapped in rough paper, which he pressed firmly into my hands.

"Open it."

Hesitantly, I unlaced the string tie and tore the brown wrapping.

It was a painted wooden imperial cavalryman, sword in hand and arm outstretched, as if ordering a charge. I fingered the thing, rolled it around in my hands. Tears formed in my eyes.

"Thank you," I said.

He rose and placed a gloved hand on my shoulder.

"Dry your tears boy," he grunted, gesturing to the blue door.

"The rest is up to you now."

Then he was gone.

I let my tears fall onto the rough stone until I could no longer stand the cold. My teeth chattered, and my fat cheeks were rouged with the bluster of the wind. Finally, I marshalled enough courage to approach the door. The blue was inviting, hypnotic. A large brass knocker in the shape of a lion's head reared up before me, its imperious eyes and snarling jaw regarding me with derision. Cautiously I stretched my small, ungloved hand out, grasped the cool metal of the ring, and quietly knocked.

The truth is, I never wanted that door to open.

* * *

 **Note** : _Wow, it's been two months without a chapter! Apologies for the long wait. I've started two new jobs and they've taken up a lot of my time, and writing this "Sorcerer's Tale" has been something that has required a good bit of planning and consideration. Originally I was going to post it as a single, long chapter, but I decided that, because it will be fairly long, that breaking it up would be best. I will do my upmost to keep a chapter coming out monthly from here on out. Thank you to all who have been following the story, and I hope that you're enjoying it so far!_


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